Connecticut western news., 1873-12-19
The Whisky of To-day.

My dear sir-you with that glass of whisky at your ips,-if you were to see man go into drug and pur- chase pint of raw alcohol, and take that alcohol out and mix it with water, and drink it, you would say he was an old guzzler. You would say he must have stomach like the bottom of tip cart. And yet that is just what you have at your lips; only your beverage is not so pure as his. Yours is drugged, and his is not.
 Time was when rum and whisky and gin were distilled to 8 percentage which admitted of retaining of the quality and flavor of the organic material. In whisky and gin much of the nutritive matter of the grain was retained and the old rum which our grandfathers drank contained 8 considerable percent age of organic saccharine matter. Those liquors were honestly distilled. They came from the retorts and receivers just as they were going into the market only lacking age to give them smooth ness. But it is not so now. There is no honesty in the market. A man may, by paying the price, have something like an honest liquor made to his es-
 
 the market, because dt as 1aot there.
 Some years since-ten years, l think I was in the office of a hotel in Conway, N. H., and was there introduced to 8 gentleman who was travelling agent of Longworth, the vine-king of Cincinnati, and also taking orders for one or two Kentucky whisky. houses. From the subject of wine the conversation turned 1o1 1o1 of which he called pure Bourbon, and which had fairly nauseated me.
 "Why is it, said I, in the earnest ness of entire innocence, that I can not find anywhere such whisky as I used to get on board ship, as Naval ra- tion, fve-and-twenty years ago ?"
 The agent was for time silent and thoughtful. By and by he nodded, and said to me-
 "It isn't made p
 "Isn't made?" I repeated, wonder ingly:
 "No," he added. "There is no such thing as the whisky of commerce dis, titled to-day, except to the especial or der of customers for individual use."
 Seeing my wonderment unabated he went on to explain. I quote his exact language so far, at least, as important particulars are concerned. Said he.-
 "They don't make it because it den't pay. The same amount of labor, time, and cost of manufacture-of course barring materials-required to throw over fUe barrels of the old-fashioned Monongahela whiskey of which you speak, will, with the new appliances of science, throw over one hundred barrels of crude spirits (coarse aleohoD. The results, that all spirit is thus distilled. It is then rectifed and diluted, and color and flavor given by artificial means"
 There you have it, sir. The stuff you are drinking is not whisky. That oth- CT stuff is not brandy. They never were, and never can be, whisky or brandy, as credulous public think them to be. The organic matter destroyed by intense distillation can never be replaced. They are fooling you, my dear fellow and you will fool yourself if you don't let it alone. If you have 8 head made of wood, and stomach of iron, you may last few years and drink it; but if you be human, with capacity fer human en- joyment and human suffering, give this liquid scourge clean go-by, and never ,ot11rr to if