“Long time between drinks”
Entry in progress—B.P.
Google Books
The Travels of a Sugar Planter: or, Six Months in Europe
By Henry Watkins Allen
New York, NY: J.F. Trow
1861
Pg. 37:
TRAFALGAR HOTEL, LONDON, ENGLAND,
August 6, 1859.
(...)
“Once upon a time, the Governor of South Carolina met the Governor of North Carolina, and says the Governor of South Carolina to the Governor of North Carolina, ‘Governor, it is a d—d long (Pg. 38—ed.) time between drinks;’ whereupon the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina, ‘Governor, suppose we do take a drink!’” on which Johnson proposed that we should all take a drink.
Google Books
Sketches from America
By John White
London: S. Low, Son, and Marston
1870
Pg. 292:
He said he would now make the proposal to the meeting, which was made by the Governor of South Carolina t othe Governor of North Carolina, when they met together for the despatch of business. As the nature of this proposal—namely, that they should at once take a drink—is universally known in America, it was carried with much acclimation; and after this timely interruption the meeting broke up, near midnight.
Google Books
Fact, Fancy, and Fable;
A new handbook for ready reference on subjects commonly omitted from cyclopaedias; comprising personal sobriquets, familiar phrases, popular appellations, geographical nicknames, literary pseudonyms, mythological characters, red-letter days, political slang, contractions and abbreviations, technical terms, foreign words and phrases, Americanisms, etc.
By Henry Frederic Reddall
Chicago, IL: A.C. McClurg
1892
Pg. 329:
Long Time between Drinks. A famous phrase commemorating a traditional interchange of courtesies between the Governors of North and South Carolina, in the course of which one remarked to the other that it was “a long time between drinks.” Various settings have been given to the tale, but George Cary Eggleston says:—
“Historically, I believe the origin of the story is lost in remote antiquity. Speculatively, I should say that the story is a native myth, a statement as of a particular fact, which conveys instead a universal truth. There is nowhere any record of any meeting between the Governors of any two Southern States in which one of the other did not in fact make a suggestion to the effect that the time for giving a helping hand to conversation by resort to alcoholic stimulation was rapidly approaching. The reduction of a general or universal truth of that character to a particular statement, as of a single and actual incident, is a well-known process, familiar to all students of mythology.”