While having been active for a period of more than thirty years in the line of hotel and bar business, and having given my greatest care to mixed drinks particularly, I have found them to be great favorites among connoisseurs.

Repeatedly the desire has been expressed to me as to where to obtain satisfactory and reliable information how to prepare such delicious mixtures. A great number of men received such information from me, as far as a few minutes' conversation could teach anybody.

The oftener, however, such questions were repeated, the more established became within me the conviction that there was among the public a general desire for a book containing all advices of such a kind. The result of this conviction is this book, that hereby is handed over to the public.

Feeling that I had to place on the market only a first-class manual, in all its details and instructions, I have given it the most particular care and study. Utmost diligence and attention have assisted me to express my thoughts in clear and exact terms, so as to enable any one, even private persons, to understand and comprehend how to obtain the most satisfactory results.

I might compare mixing drinks with the working in fractions, especially in circulating decimals; if we are not very careful in the order in which we do certain operations, we most certainly will never arrive at a correct result; neglecting following decimal places will largely affect the correctness of our final answer. So, too, in mixing drinks: The fractional parts of liquors that are to be mixed, and their order, have to be carefully considered, and without such consideration no palatable drink may be expected.

I do not deny that a book on drinks will mainly have to cover the demands of public resorts, but I hope, and I am sure many join me in this feeling, that there will be a time when reasonable drinking is not looked upon as a crime; and the time will come when around the table the whole family sits chatting and whiling idle hours away, while the sparkling bowl sharpens their wit and loosens their tongues; when father and grown-up sons will not leave their homes to seek recreation, but when they will spend their leisure time in the family circle.

By careful investigation every impartial reader will find that nearly all recipes concerning bowls, punches, etc., are made not so much for the bar-use as for the family.

It may sound "strange from the lips of a mixer of drinks, and still it is the truth - I believe in temperance. Surely this my belief has no reference to temperance that identifies itself with prohibition, but it has reference to temperance in the word's true meaning: tempering or moderating the enjoyment of liquors.

A habitual drinker will never indulge in beverages artistically mixed; he lacks the taste of them, as they do not bring him rapidly enough to his desired nirvana. In drinking, our aim must be enjoyment, not inebriation. Thus the culture of mixed drinks will lead us with greater sureness to true temperance than all blue laws ever will be able to do.

Another reason for setting my foot upon the slippery road of a public writer was the general approval my new concoctions met with. For years I have been urged to publish the recipes of the same; some of them have been communicated to the public by the medium of our leading newspapers, when occasion and demand seemed to render it desirable. Never, however, I felt inclined to giving the reader only a series of recipes. My ambition took a higher flight. If ever I was to place anything upon the market, it should be a book containing not only recipes valuable to professional men mostly, but one, the reading matter of which should be of a kind that every intelligent man might find at least something to arouse his interest. Should this my sincere wish find fulfillment, even in a limited degree, my labor bestowed on this volume I should not think wasted.

The reading matter does not claim to replace an encyclopaedia; I restrained myself to select only such subjects as might be of some value to the majority of my readers. In the Physiology of Drinking I preferred to give general hints than an entire treatise on this subject, which, treated upon extensively, would by itself fill a volume similar to this in size. The pages about poetry, likewise, give only a selection of the best poets: should I have omitted one of the favorites of my esteemed readers, I beg their kind forgiveness.

The drinks themselves are divided into two great groups, such as served and serviceable at the bar only, which are enumerated under the heading "Mixed Drinks," and such as might be desirable for societies and larger companies, as punches, bowls, etc.

While thanking my co-workers for their kind and indefatigable assistance, and expressing my heartfelt gratitude to my many patrons for the interest they took in the book while it still was unwritten, as well as to Messrs. Chas. L. Webster & Co. for the care which they bestowed upon the outfit of same, I deliver these pages to the public.

May it be accompanied by kindness, and may it, in return, be a guide to the reader that will show him the path to many a happy hour.

Very respectfully yours,

A. William Schmidt.