Page:Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines Cordials and Liqueurs.djvu/11

 me rare old gardens aglow with flowers, fruits, and vegetables that in due time would contribute to their store, and at parting various time-worn recipes were urged upon me, with verbal instructions and injunctions upon the best methods of putting them to test.

From this beginning I ferreted out from other sources recipes for many curious concoctions, the very name of which fills the mind with fantasies and pictures of the long ago. Do we not feel poignant sympathy for the grief of the poor Widow of Malabar, whose flow of tears has descended in spirit, through three centuries, to those still faithful to her memory? Did we ever pause to consider what a slaughter of the innocents went to make famous many an old English tavern whose Sign of the Cock made the weary traveller pause and draw rein, and call loudly for the stirrup cup of this home-brewed ale? Can we not feel the ponderous presence, and smell the strong tobacco from the pipes of groups of stolid Dutchmen, of the days of Wouter Van Twiller, when we read of that one-time favorite beverage, Schiedam Schnapps? Again, are we not back in that dull, but delightful, society of the days of Colonel Newcome, when a quiet game of bezique was interrupted by the tidy