Of a truth, they played well the Greek in their cups. E pithi e apithl! Quaff, or be off! Cut in, or cut out! Or in the language of our time, to promote hilarity it was the rale that every man should tell a story, sing a song, or treat the crowd.
The drinking customs of California were peculiar, as I have said, but not all the drinking and drunkenness of this world has been confined to California. "I was afraid he might have urged drinking," says Boswell of Johnson, "as I believe he used formerly to do, but he drank port and water out of a large glass himself, and let us do as we pleased. . . . After supper Dr Johnson told us that Isaac Hawkins Browne drank freely for thirty years, and that he wrote his poem, De Animi Immortalitate, in some of the last of these years. I listened to this with the eagerness of one who, conscious of being himself fond of wine, is glad to hear that a man of so much genius and good thinking as Browne had the same propensity." Again: "I reminded him how heartily he and I used to drink wine together when we were first acquainted, and how I used to have a headache after sitting up with him. He did not like to have this recalled, or perhaps thinking that I boasted improperly."
Johnson expressed great contempt for claret, saying, "a man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk. Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. In the first place, the flavor of brandy is most grateful to the palate, and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinkins; can do for him." At another time he said, " Drinking may be practised with great prudence; a man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk; a sober man who happens occasionally to get drunk readily enough goes into a new company, which a man who has been drinking should never do. Such a man will undertake anj^thing. He is without skill in inebriation. I used to slink home when I had
