Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
And after the horses there is whiskey. There are many distilleries in
this part of the country, and a great deal of whiskey is made. I am not
defending whiskey, at least any that is less than thirty years old and
has attained a medicinal quality. But I want to express my opinion that
this is as temperate as any region in the United States. There is a
wide-spread strict temperance sentiment, and even prohibition prevails
to a considerable degree. Whiskey is made and stored, and mostly shipped
away; rightly or wrongly, it is regarded as a legitimate business, like
wheatraising, and is conducted by honorable men. I believe this to be
the truth, and that drunkenness does not prevail in the neighborhood of
the distilleries, nor did I see anywhere in the country evidence of a
habit of dram drinking, of the traditional matter-of-course offering of
whiskey as a hospitality. It is true that mint grows in Kentucky,
and that there are persons who would win the respect of a tide-water
Virginian in the concoction of a julep. And no doubt in the mind of
the born Kentuckian there is a rooted belief that if a person needed
a stimulant, the best he can take is old hand-made whiskey. Where the
manufacture of whiskey is the source of so much revenue, and is carried
on with decorum, of course the public sentiment about it differs from
that of a community that makes its money in raising potatoes for starch.
Where the horse is so beautiful, fleet, and profitable, of course
there is intense interest in him, and the general public take a
lively pleasure in the races; but if the reader has been accustomed
to associate this part of Kentucky with horse-racing and drinking as
prominent characteristics, he must revise his opinion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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