seltzer, lemonade, and fire-extincteurs hand grenades--minerals,
they call such stuff in England--fill a man with wind and
self-righteousness. Indeed they do! Coffee destroys brain and
kidney, a fact now universally recognised and advertised throughout
America; and tea, except for a kind of green tea best used with
discretion in punch, tans the entrails and turns honest stomachs
into leather bags. Rather would I be Metchnikoffed [Footnote: See
The Nature of Man, by Professor Elie Metchnikoff.] at once and have
a clean, good stomach of German silver. No! If we are to have no ale
in Utopia, give me the one clean temperance drink that is worthy to
set beside wine, and that is simple water. Best it is when not quite
pure and with a trace of organic matter, for then it tastes and
sparkles....

My botanist would still argue.

Thank Heaven this is my book, and that the ultimate decision rests
with me. It is open to him to write his own Utopia and arrange that
everybody shall do nothing except by the consent of the savants of
the Republic, either in his eating, drinking, dressing or lodging,
even as Cabet proposed. It is open to him to try a News from Nowhere
Utopia with the wine left out. I have my short way with him here
quite effectually. I turn in the entrance of our inn to the civil
but by no means obsequious landlord, and with a careful ambiguity of
manner for the thing may be considered an outrage, and I try to make
it possible the idea is a jest--put my test demand....

"You see, my dear Teetotaler?--he sets before me tray and glass
and..." Here follows the necessary experiment and a deep sigh....
"Yes, a bottle of quite _excellent_ light beer! So there are also