OPPORTUNITIES FOR BEER.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
MEN will never lack for an excuse for drinking. If they have no inherited disease for which liquor is a panacea, they can soon drink enough to produce a disease for which liquor is an "infallible remedy." Similia similibus curantur is the beer guzzler's motto. In this respect they are true Homeopathists, but in practice, they go on the principle that if a little is good a good deal is better. But besides curative (?) properties of alcoholic beverages, they are much lauded as preventives of disease. A very common excuse for indulging in them is, that the water is bad, and the liquor is added—usually in a separate glass—to correct the impurities in the water. But modern enterprise knows no limit, and now we have, as an excuse for drinking, the fact that water is pure! A correspondent of the N. Y. Sun, writes from a town in Mexico as follows:— "There is a splendid chance in Tepic for an enterprising brewer. There is here plenty of good water, pure, cold, and sweet; and an abundance of land for the cultivation of barley and hops." One would suppose that such water would afford no excuse for drinking alcoholic liquor. But no. This correspondent sees in it nothing but the material for beer. The little girl who, when asked what flowers were made for, replied that they were for patterns for artificials was far ahead of this man; for, while her idea would leave us the enjoyment of the flowers, he would turn the pure water into impure beer. What an amount of unimproved water there is. All the mountain streams, clear as crystal, and innumerable lakes, and rivers, and Niagara's inexhaustible torrent, running to waste. What quantities of beer they would make. Beer enough for everybody. Truly, "God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions."