DRINKS.--RIDING HOME ON YOUR WINE-BARREL.--LIST OF
THINGS TO MAKE RUM.--THINGS TO COLOR IT WITH.--CANAL-BOAT HASH.--ENGLISH
ADULTERATION LAW.--EFFECTS OF DRUGS USED.--HOW TO USE THEM.--BUYING
LIQUORS UNDER THE CUSTOM-HOUSE LOCK.--A HOMOEOPATHIC DOSE.

As long as the people of the United States tipple down rum and other
liquors at the rate of a good deal more than one hundred million gallons
a year, besides what is imported and what is called imported--as long as
they pay for their tippling a good deal more than fifty millions, and
probably over a hundred millions of dollars a year--so long it will be a
great object to manufacture false liquors, and sell them at the price of
true ones. When liquor of good quality costs from four to fifteen
dollars a gallon, and an imitation can be had that tastes just as good,
and has just as much "jizm" in it,--and probably a good deal more,--for
from twenty-five cents to one dollar a gallon, somebody will surely make
and sell that imitation.

Adulterating and imitating liquors is a very large business; and I don't
know of anybody who will deny that this particular humbug is very
extensively cultivated. There are a great many people, however, who will
talk about it as they do in Western towns about fever and ague: "We
don't do anything of the kind here, but those other people over there
do!"

There is very little pure liquor, either malt or spirituous, to be
obtained in any way. The more you pay for it, as a rule, the more the
publican gains, but what you drink is none the purer. Importing don't
help you. Port is--or used to be, for very little is now made,
comparatively--imitated in immense quantities at Oporto; and in the
log-wood trade, the European wine-makers competed with the dyers. It is
a London proverb, that if you want genuine port-wine, you have got to go
to Oporto and make your own wine, and then ride on the barrel all the
way home. It is perhaps possible to get pure wine in France by buying it
at the vineyard; but if any dealer has had it, give up the idea!

As for what is done this side of the water, now for it. I do not rely
upon the old work of Mr. "Death-in-the-pot Accum," printed some thirty
years ago, in England. My statements come mostly from a New York book
put forth within a few years by a New York man, whose name is now in the
Directory, and whose business is said to consist to a great extent in
furnishing one kind or another of the queer stuff he talks abou