The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-03-19
ABsiN THE
The Parisian's Devotion to the Seductive
Drink.
paris Letter to the New York Press.

Drink.
(Paris Letter to the New York Press. }
Your American tourist, fitting
Though Paris In his summer jog to the
Riviera or to Rome, with his palate &C.
oustomed to the favorite tipples Of New
York, finds food for curious reflection In
the Parisian's absinthe. The Frenohman's
green hour" is to him an unknown
quality. He, has been used at home to
adding little dash of bitter absinthe to
his cocktail, and imagining that its Pc
ohiiar tang is a little taste.of the peculiar
wickedness which the French capital
holds. Indeed, he does not recognize in
the tall goblet. filled with yellowish-green
ish mixture and slipped on every cafe
terrace BY schoolboys, soldiers, students.
priests and men of the monde, the drink
which he had been used to associate with
the night-hawk gayety of French
boulevard. For the American, who has
no time to sit on cafe terrace and spend
an hour every evening in slipping from a
goblet and Watching the crowds passing
upon the pavement, knows absinthe only
as strong cordial, to be trapped or to
give. ping to his accustomed appetizer.
When he has experimented in the
Partisan way and drunk his absinthe
with the rest an hour or two before din
ner, when he feels the added zest of ap-
petite and the glow which this absurd
smelling, absurd looking concoction
offers. then he be gins to understand how
this drink can create passion stronger
than gambling, and so fasten its highly
seasoned self upon people that even
government measures are, to an extent,
helpless in dimini shing its use and its
traffic.
The absinthe outfit in Paris is tall
carafe of iced water, full-sized go blet,
a fat spoon with pierced bowl and cake
OF beet sugar. From bottle of thick
oily, gret n absinths the garcon pours in
to tho goblet layer whose thickness
grows slowly until your upiifted finger
warns him that you have enough. Two
fingers is a good beginning. After that
you are likely to take more. When the
garoon has departed you lay the silver
spoon aross the top Of the goblet, place
the fiat cake of sugar in its bowl, which
is made exactly to hold it, and pour a
tiny stream of iced water from the carafe
slowly upon it. The water trickles down
through the bowl, dissolvinR the sugar
as it comes, and by the time the goblet
is full the water has turned from the
deep green Of the pure absinthe to the
murky yellowish green which one for
ever afterward associates with the drink.
Sit at a cafe in Paris and order an
absinthe mixed in this manner and you
will realize that the trapped. bitter stuff
of the American idea is as much like 1t
rs crow is like nightingale. Some
have to learn to like 1t, as one learns to
eat olives, by three fold trial. Maybe
you will be one of those who like it ex-
at first taste.
Now sip it slowly as you would an egg
nog and feel your temperature rise, bring
ing with it mild thirst and gnawing
appetite. This Is the "green hour, "
from to in the evening, and you are
now a part of it. AS you grow delicious
~ warmer. and your thoughts come
quicker, and the atmosphere grows
roster, look at the goblet, and, watching
it's changing dolphin oolors, think how
ike this drink is to the Frenrhman him
'elf. who has made it his own. II is
loft and milky. like his manners, seas
u ed and sharply spiced like his taste,
1erfumed and fragrant like his foppery,
,xquisitely sweetened like his politeness
bitter like his philosophy, green like his
jealousy, yellow like his morality, and
lnflaming like his passions.
In fact, the great proportion of the
'extrait d'absinthe' which one drinks
in Paris is nothing more than a decoc-
tion made by pounding worm wood
leaves and Towering tips with calamus,
angelica root, anise seed and leaves of
dittany of Crete, soaked for week or
SO in alcohol, distilled, favored to the
taste with anise oil and colored with
tumeric and indigo dys.
However carefully the government of
France keeps water and however heavy
the penalties with which itlpunisheA suoh
wholesale adulteration, the traffic in
absinthe ia 80 Widespread that it seems
TO be impossible to prevent it.
The sing lie city of Paris today con-
sumes 10. 600, COO litres-half as much as
absinthe. From Switzerland al one
France imports every year 1000, 600 gal
lons.4
there has been any amount OF discus
sion as to whether the effects Of the drug
upon the individual are due to its own
active principle, or to it's numerous adj
disions and authorizations. A French
man (who drinks it every day as regular
" as he eats his salad) Will tell you that
Its only harm lies in the anise oil with
which cheap absinthe is plentifully
favored. "He doesn It drink at four
sous oafe," however. Ask physician,
and be will tell you that only little
while ago the French national academy
IF sciences, in long-coDtinued series of
under the order of the gov
demonstrated absolutely that
this drug, absinthe, pure and simple,
Is responsible for the mischief: that
thousands Of experiments upon animals,
With pure alcohol, pure absinthe, ab-
'inrhe In alcohol and mixed with all the
1rugs separately and in combination,
brought a conclusion so irresistibls that
The eademy of medicine of the upiver-
ity of Paris ordered reports to be collect
sd from all the hospitals Of France, and
Is result of their inquiries declared that
The use of absinthe was the most prevail
ng cause of EPILEPSY and idiocv known to
French medicine. He will tell YOU that
jhe a1oohclists entered In hospital records
contain such large proportion of
abaiDtheurs, that the term absintbisme
WIS found necessary to tag this partiou-
ar disease. 49,
AK the average Partisan who dimes at
your favorite cafe and he will pooh-pooh