I claim no merit for the following pages, other than may attach to in­dus­try, appli­ca­tion, the gift of copying accurately, and the acqui­si­tion of writer’s cramp. The mechan­i­cal writ­ing is—to the great joy of the com­pos­i­tors who have dealt with it—every let­ter mine own; but the best part of the book has been conveyed from other sources. In fact the book is, as the old lady said of the divine tragedy of Hamlet, “full of quotations.” The hand is the hand of Gubbins, but the voice is, for the most part, the voice of the great ones of the past, including Pliny and Gervase Markham. The matter, or most of it—I am endeavouring to drive the fact home—is culled from other sources; and if this is the most useful and inter­est­ing work ever pub­lished it is more my for­tune than my fault.

The genial reception of my earlier effort, Cakes and Ale—which was condemned only by worshippers of Ala, who were not expected to applaud—together with the hope of earning something towards the purchase of a Bath Chair—have induced me to issue this little treatise on liquids, as a companion to my first cloth-bound book. And innate modesty—I stick to “innate,” despite the critics—compels me to add that I think the last is the better work. I will, however, leave a generous and discriminating public to decide that question for itself.

LONDON, CHRISTMAS EVE, 1898.