It should be made in the month of March. Take the thin rinds of six Seville oranges, and put them into a stone jar, with half-a-pint of the strained juice, and two quarts of good old brandy. Let it remain three days, then add one pound and a quarter of loaf sugar--broken, not pounded--and stir till the sugar is dissolved. Let the liquor stand a day, strain it through paper till quite clear, pour into bottles, and cork tightly. The longer it is kept the better. _Mandragora._ "Can't sleep." Eh? What! not after a dry chapter on liquids? Drink this, and you will not require any rocking. Simmer half-a-pint of old ale, and just as it is about to boil pour it into a tumbler, grate a little nutmeg over it, and add a teaspoonful of moist sugar, and two tablespoonfuls of brandy. Good night, Hamlet! CHAPTER XX THE DAYLIGHT DRINK "Something too much of this." "A nipping and an eager air." Evil effects of dram-drinking--The "Gin-crawl"--Abstinence in H.M. service--City manners and customs--Useless to argue with the soaker--Cocktails--Pet names for drams--The free lunch system--Fancy mixtures--Why no Cassis?--Good advice like water on a duck's back. Whilst holding the same opinion as the epicure who declared that good eating required good drinking, there is no question but that there should be a limit to both. There is, as Shakespeare told us, a tide in the affairs of man, so why should there not be in this particular affair? Why should it be only ebb tide during the few hours that the man is wrapped in the arms of a Bacchanalian Morpheus, either in bed or in custody? The abuse of good liquor is surely as criminal a folly as the abstention therefrom; and the man who mixes his liquors injudiciously lacks that refinement of taste and understanding which is necessary for the appreciation of a good deal of this book, or indeed of any other useful volume. Our grandfathers swore terribly, and drank deep; but their fun did not commence until after dinner. And they drank, for the most part, the best of ale, and such port wine as is not to be had in these days of free trade (which is only an euphemism for adulteration) and motor cars. Although mine own teeth are, periodically, set on edge by the juice of the grape consumed by an ancestor or two; although the gout within me is an heritage from the three-, aye! and four-, bottle era, I respect mine ancestors, in that they knew not "gin and bitters." The baleful habit of alcoholising the inner sinner between meal times, the pernicious habit of dram-drinking, or "nipping," from early morn till dewy eve, was not introduced into our cities until the latter half of the nineteenth century had set in. "Brandy-and-soda," at first only used as a