Who was ever known to drink just a part of one of Tom's?
Tom, than whom there is no greater mixologist of any race, color or condition of servitude, was taught the art of the julep by no less than Marse Lilburn G. McNair, the father of the julep.
In fact, the very cup that Col. Roosevelt drank it from belonged to Governor McNair, the first Governor of Missouri, the great-grandfather of Marse Lilburn and the great-great-grandfather of the julep.
As is well known, the Country Club mint originally sprang on the slopes of Parnassus and was transplanted thence to the bosky banks of Culpeper Creek, Gaines County, Ky., and thence to our own environs; while the classic distillation with which Tom mingles it to produce his chief d'oeuvre is the oft-quoted liquefied soul of a Southern moonbeam falling aslant the dewy slopes of the Cumberland Mountains.
To believe that a red-blooded man, and a true Colonel at that, ever stopped with just a part of one of those refreshments which have made St. Louis hospitality proverbial and become one of our most distinctive genre institutions, is to strain credulity too far.
Are the Colonel's powers of self restraint altogether transcendent?
Have we found the living superman at last? When the Colonel says that he consumed just a part of one he doubtless meant that he did not swallow the Mint itself, munch the ice and devour the very cup.