Alice Earle - Stage-coach and Tavern Days

Many years ago, one bitter winter day, there stepped down from a rocking mail-coach into the Washington Tavern in a Pennsylvania town, a dashing young man who swaggered up to the bar and bawled out for a drink of “Scotchem.” The landlord was running here and there, talking to a score of people and doing a score of things at once, and he called to his son, a lubberly, countrified young fellow, to give the gentleman his Scotchem. The boy was but a learner in the taproom, but he was a lad of few words, so he hesitatingly mixed a glass of hot water and Scotch whiskey, which the traveller scarcely tasted ere he roared out: “Don’t you know what Scotchem is? Apple-jack, and boiling water, and a good dash of ground mustard. Here’s a shilling to pay for it.” The boy stared at the uninviting recipe, but faithfully compounded it, when toot-toot sounded the horn – the coach waited for no man, certainly not for a man to sip a scalding drink – and such a drink, and off in a trice went full coach and empty traveller. The young tapster looked dubiously at the great mug of steaming drink; then he called to an old trapper, a town pauper, who, crippled with rheumatism, sat ever in the warm chimney corner of the taproom, telling stories of coons and catamounts and wolverines, and taking such stray drops of liquid comfort as old companions or new sympathizers might pityingly give him. “Here, Ezra,” the boy said, “you take the gentleman’s drink. It’s paid for.” Ezra was ever thirsty and never fastidious. He gulped down the Scotchem. “It’s good,” he swaggered bravely, with eyes streaming from the scalding mustard, “an’ it’s tasty, too, ef it does favor tomato ketchup.”

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