We English do not make nearly as much use of rum in cookery as do our lively neighbours. One of the most approved of _entremets_ is an _omelette au rhum_, a truly grateful dish, if the omelette be properly made, although rum be spelt with an “h.” But it is a mistake to use rum-sauce with plum-pudding, as do the French; for brandy is a far better digestive of the cloying materials of which the pudding is composed. As mentioned in _Cakes and Ale_, rum-and-milk is said, by the chief English authority on dietetics, to be the most powerful restorative known to man. This may, or may not, be true; I am prepared to back a judicious dose of “the Boy”—_not_ limited to a “split pint,” either. But of all horrible mixtures, defend me from rum-and-ale, which used to be a potion much in favour with the dangerous classes of our metropolis, in the days when I went “slumming” in search of plain unvarnished facts. A steaming tumbler of rum and hot water, with a piece of butter melted therein, was, in my younger days, in vogue as an infallible {86} specific to eject a cold from the head. Nowadays, I prefer the cold. Gin is supposed by students, who do not make practical test of their learning, to be distilled from malt, or from unmalted barley, or from some other grain, and afterwards rectified and flavoured. And just as it was (according to Mr. Samuel Weller) the seasoning which did it in the case of the cheap pies, so is it the rectifying, and the flavouring which do it, in the matter of gin. Occasionally “rectifying” is hardly the right word to use. That there is such a thing as wholesome, tolerably-pure gin is more than probable; but there is also a very undesirable fluid sold to the poorer classes, and esteemed by their vitiated palates, known under different pet names, of which “blue ruin” and “white satin” are two. This brand of gin is flavoured more or less with oil of turpentine and common salt. No wonder thirst stalks abroad next morning! “In one well-known hostelry,” observes a writer in a daily newspaper, “situated not a stone’s throw from the Bank of England, you can, if you be so minded, ask for and obtain a farthing’s worth of gin. It is served in tiny liqueur-glasses, and the custom dates from the time when the purchasing power of the coin in question was far greater than it is now, and when consequently, a farthing’s worth of gin was considered to be a sufficient quantity for any respectable citizen. Another public-house, in Bishopsgate Street, is also compelled, by the terms of its license, to supply a farthing’s worth of either ‘gin, rum, or shrub,’ to any customer requiring {87} it; while not far away is a hostelry which is permitted to carry on the dual businesses of liquor-dispensing or pawnbroking. Yet another City public-house possesses a sort of annexe where medicines are retailed. Handy, this, for the unhappy sufferer from swelled head.”