ch gives an attractive tang and
effervescence to the beer, wine, cider or champagne. That is to say, one
of these twins is a pestilential fellow and the other is decidedly
agreeable. Yet for several thousand years mankind took to the first and
let the second for the most part escape into the air. But when the
chemist appeared on the scene he discovered a way of separating the two
and bottling the harmless one for those who prefer it. An increasing
number of people were found to prefer it, so the American soda-water
fountain is gradually driving Demon Rum out of the civilized world. The
brewer nowadays caters to two classes of customers. He bottles up the
beer with the alcohol and a little carbonic acid in it for the saloon
and he catches the rest of the carbonic acid that he used to waste and
sells it to the drug stores for soda-water or uses it to charge some
non-alcoholic beer of his own.

This catering to rival trades is not an uncommon thing with the chemist.
As we have seen, the synthetic perfumes are used to improve the natural
perfumes. Cottonseed is separated into oil and meal; the oil going to
make margarin and the meal going to feed the cows that produce butter.
Some people have been drinking coffee, although they do not like the
taste of it, because they want the stimulating effect of its alkaloid,
caffein. Other people liked the warmth and flavor of coffee but find
that caffein does not agree with them. Formerly one had to take the
coffee whole or let it alone. Now one can have his choice, for the
caffein is extracted for use in certain popular cold drinks and the rest
of the bean sold as caffein-free coffee.

Most of the "soft drinks" that are now gradually displacing the hard
ones consist of sugar, water and carbonic acid, with various flavors,
chiefly the esters of the fatty and aromatic acids, such as I described
in a previous chapter. These are still usually made from fruits and
spices and in some cases the law or public opinion requires this, but
eventually, I presume, the synthetic flavors will displace the natural
and then we shall get rid of such extraneous and indigestible matter as
seeds, skins and bark. Suppose the world had always been used to
synthetic and hence seedless figs, strawberries and blackberries.
Suppose then some manufacturer of fig paste or strawberry jam should put
in ten per cent. of little round hard wooden nodules, just the sort to
get stuck between the teeth or caught in the