artists in oleaginous dress suits, down goes
the Spatenbraeu--gurgle, gurgle--burble, burble--down goes the
Spatenbraeu--exquisite, ineffable!--to drench the heart in its nut brown
flood and fill the arteries with its benign alkaloids and antitoxins.

Well, well, maybe I grow too eloquent! Such memories loose and craze
the tongue. A man pulls himself up suddenly, to find that he has been
vulgar. If so here, so be it! I refuse to plead to the indictment;
sentence me and be hanged to you! I am by nature a vulgar fellow. I
prefer "Tom Jones" to "The Rosary," Rabelais to the Elsie books, the Old
Testament to the New, the expurgated parts of "Gulliver's Travels" to
those that are left. I delight in beef stews, limericks, burlesque
shows, New York City and the music of Haydn, that beery and delightful
old rascal! I swear in the presence of ladies and archdeacons. When the
mercury is above ninety-five I dine in my shirt sleeves and write poetry
naked. I associate habitually with dramatists, bartenders, medical men
and musicians. I once, in early youth, kissed a waitress at Dennett's.
So don't accuse me of vulgarity; I admit it and flout you. Not, of
course, that I have no pruderies, no fastidious metes and bounds. Far
from it. Babies, for example, are too vulgar for me; I cannot bring
myself to touch them. And actors. And evangelists. And the obstetrical
anecdotes of ancient dames. But in general, as I have said, I joy in
vulgarity, whether it take the form of divorce proceedings or of
"Tristan und Isolde," of an Odd Fellows' funeral or of Munich beer.

But here, perhaps, I go too far again. That is to say, I have no right
to admit that Munich beer is vulgar. On the contrary, it is my obvious
duty to deny it, and not only to deny it but also to support my denial
with an overwhelming mass of evidence and a shrill cadenza of casuistry.
But the time and the place, unluckily enough, are not quite fit for the
dialectic, and so I content myself with a few pertinent observations.
_Imprimis_, a thing that is unique, incomparable, _sui generis_, cannot
be vulgar. Munich beer is unique, incomparable, _sui generis_. More, it
is consummate, transcendental, _uebernatuerlich_. Therefore it cannot be
vulgar. Secondly, the folk who drink it day after day do not die of
vulgar diseases. Turn to the subhead _Todesursachen_ in the instructive
_Statistischer Monatsbericht der Stadt Muenchen_, and you will find
records of few if any deaths from del