by Bernard DeVoto.Houghton Mifflin, $1.75.
“The hour” is the interlude before the evening meal when toil-stained sinners partake of the benison of spiritous liquor. DeVoto hymns the praises of fine whiskey; celebrates the marriage of good gin and dry vermouth; and lays down simple commandments which will arm the tippler against heresy and preserve him from the demon, Rum. With the whips and scorpions of a martial prose style, our prophet chastises the infidels who play around with grenadine, fancy liqueurs, and like abominations; and dreadful is his wrath when he visits those abodes where the apparatus of tippling is leeringly bedizened with girlie-stuff and whimsey. The Hour should become a devotional manual among those who decently seek uplift through the power of the bottle.