I suppose as the above has appeared in a newspaper, it is strictly true. But how sad! Although my knowledge of London is “peculiar” I cannot say I am acquainted with the licensed house in which drawing drinks and taking in pledges are combined; but I have seen farthing’s worths of “Old Tom” dispensed in more than one hostelry, to slatternly women, before my own breakfast hour, and I have shuddered at the sight. But why stop short at selling medicines in the annexe of a dram shop? I should have thought an undertaker, in another compartment, might do a fairish trade. These are some of the ingredients put into gin, to give it “body,” and make it “bite”—gin without teeth being notoriously inferior tipple and altogether unfit for the consumption of the good ladies who are, sad to say, by far the best customers of the gin retailer:—roach-alum (this sounds fishy), salt of tartar, oil of juniper, cassia, nutmeg, lemon, fennel, and carraway and coriander seeds, cardamoms, capsicums, and sulphuric acid. All these, mind ye, besides the afore-mentioned oil of turpentine, and the afore-mentioned potato-spirit, which last would seem to enter into most drinks of the day. The word “Gin” is really an abbreviation of “Geneva,” under which name the spirit was at {88} one time known. Not that it is principally manufactured in picturesque Switzerland, where the watches come from; but “Geneva” is a corruption of the old French word _genevre_, the juniper. I used to read, in childhood’s days, that Juniper berries and barley make gin, but those ingredients—or the berries, at all events—would seem to be only regularly used in Holland, nowadays. “Dirty” gin, of which we used to hear so much, was, I believe, as pure as any other geneva, and not less clean. Plymouth gin is said to be the healthiest form of the article, but ’tis an acquired taste, and “Old Tom” is certainly more toothsome. In entering as fully into details as I have above I have no wish to discourage the consumption of gin proper, especially when blended with ginger-beer (an excellent summer beverage), or doing duty in a cock-tail, a sling, a punch, or a John Collins. But I am not a “gin man” myself. And to my mind a “nip” less calculated to promote appetite than any other is a “gin-and-bitters.” “Kosher” rum, _i.e._ rum treated according to instructions laid down in the Mosaic Law, is in high favour with the Jews; and in some of the taverns which abut on the Israelitish quarters which are about Aldgate there are recognized “rum-rooms.” There used to be, and probably is at the present day, a considerable amount of card—playing (_spieling_) or throwing of dice for wagers, carried on in these apartments; and I once knew a son of Judah who was heavily fined {89} by the stipendiary magistrate, for gambling on licensed premises. To the day of his death this Jew protested his innocence of the crime. He told me the whole story, interlarded with tears and gesticulations.