obtained milk from Mr. Biles, the most prominent milk-dealer in the
village. The prevailing impression among the Twiddlers was that Mr.
Biles supplied an exceedingly thin and watery fluid; and one day when
the judge stepped over to pay his quarterly bill he determined to make
complaint. He found Mr. Biles in the yard mending the valve of his
pump; and when the judge made a jocular remark to the effect that the
dairy must be in a bad way when the pump was out of order, Mr. Biles,
rising with his hammer in his hand, said,

"Oh, I ain't going to deny that we water the milk. I don't mind the
joking about it. But all I say is that when people say we do it from
mercenary motives they slander the profession. No, sir; when I put
water in the milk, I do it out of kindness for the people who drink
it. I do it because I'm philanthropic--because I'm sensitive and can't
bear to see folks suffer. Now, s'pos'n a cow is bilious or something,
and it makes her milk unwholesome. I give it a dash or two of water,
and up it comes to the usual level. Water's the only thing that'll do
it. Or s'pos'n that cow eats a pison vine in the woods; am I going to
let my innocent customers be killed by it for the sake of saving a
little labor at the pump? No, sir; I slush in a few quarts of water,
neutralize the pison, and there she is as right as a trivet.

"But you take the best milk that ever was, and it ain't fit for the
human stomach as it comes from the cow. It has too much caseine in it.
Prof. Huxley says that millions of poor ignorant men and women are
murdered every year by loading down weak stomachs with caseine. It
sucks up the gastric juice, he says, and gets daubed all around over
the membranes until the pores are choked, and then the first thing you
know the man suddenly curls all up and dies. He says that out yer in
Asia, where the milkmen are not as conscientious as we are, there are