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Post #101: How to Drink Like a Gentleman

How to Drink Like a Gentleman: The Things to Do and the Things Not To, as Learned in 30 Years’ Extensive Research

By H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken was a columnist for the Baltimore Evening Sun and editor of the American Mercury. This essay was originally published in Liberty Magazine on January 12, 1935.

From 1924 to 1950, Liberty Magazine published the work of such writers and public figures as Greta Garbo, Margaret Sanger, Babe Ruth, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Its weekly circulation reached 3 million. Today, the magazine is largely forgotten, but many of its pieces are being reissued in several collections available on Amazon. This essay has been republished in the collection ‘Liberty on Drinking.’

"Before prohibition, drinkers knew their liquor. Now even the wisest of us may grope helplessly unless we can recognize the bottle we met the other night at a friend's. Therefore the bar must lay out bottles for the drinker to recognize. In the old bar fine art had a place—good-natured Venuses; now we need the wall space for the dummy bottles. Of course you might keep the mural paintings by locating the receding shelves for bottles beneath the top of the back bar. Either way, the shelves should be of glass, with mirrors behind them. It is sometimes the other side of the bottle that the drinker recognizes. The ideal bar will have enough glass in the top to let you see what the bartender is doing. A good bartender desires your eyes upon him as he mixes the drink. It's a graceful act."

Read the rest:

http://gawker.com/5987040/how-to-drink-like-a-gentleman-the-things-to-do-and-the-things-not-to-as-learned-in-30-years-extensive-research