The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-08-27
IarirnHnraL
Misstatement OF Facts.

having never tried. Even the good minis
ter declared sadly that he had wept barrels
of tears over his habit of exsggeration.
There are good many lies going about
that are 80 firmly fixed as facts in the
minds of the people that the real truth OF
the matter will not be accepted by one in
thousand. For instance, we have al
ways found it quite impossible to make
any one belive that strychnine is not,
never has been, and cannot be used in
making whiskey. The statement that it
is not has, many times, caused us to be
suspected as "rum-sympathizer," not
witbstsnding the fact that we are life
long abstainer, not only from alcoholic
drinks, but from tobacco, tea, coffee, and
every other sort of intoxicant. Every
chemist knows the fact in relation to
strychnine and whiskey, yet every little
while we see the charge repeated in the
papers on the authority of can eminent
chemist" whose name is never stated.
There is another statement so COM
monty made about alcoholic drinks that
almost every reader will be astonished to
hear it denied-will in fact now hear it
denied for the first time, in all probable
ity. This is the statement that liquors
and wines are much more impure and
more adultersted now than they used to
be, fifty or more years ago. The truth is
that the old grain and potato WHISTLES
were horribly impure, being so rank with
narcotic substances from the potato, or
with fusel oils from the grain, that it re-
quired quite an apprenticeship to be able
to swallow them with a straight face.
Rum, being made from sugar or molasses,
which are free from narcotic properties,
has always been very pure form of alec
hol; but all the spirits made from grain
and potatoes were as vile as vile could be,
in this respect, until the process of recti-
fication was invented, by which these
spirits could be deprived of foreign sub
stances by filtering them through char
COAL Since then the grain and root
WHISTLES have been made nearly as pure
alcohol as rum. The adulteration and
Justification of wines have also greatly
decreased since they have been largely
made in this country, and very little of
the native wine is now adulterated, unless
it be called adulteration to add sugar or
glucose to them, in order, by its fermenta-
ton, to increase their alcoholic strength.
But to our mind these facts are no recon-
mendation, either for spirits or for wine.
Their real evil has not been in their i'm
purities, or their adulteration, but in their
alcohol, which is the worst poison that the
most impure or adulterated drink ever
contained. We have often heard peo-
pie say that if we could only get pure
liquor, "such as they had in old times it
wouldn't do 80 much harm. Well, the
purest liquor will make a man drunk, and
what worse harm can happen to him than
that, if he persists in ii ? The evil of
alcoholic drinks is their alcohol, "and
don't you forget it." The soluble narcotic
principles formed from the raw potato
(Which, being volatile, are dissipated in
cooking) accumulate in injurious guam
tity in whiskey made from potatoes, yet
they are not so injurious as the alcohol.
Nor is the fusel-oil of grain spirit 30 poi.
sonous as the alcohol of it. These are
facts.
We spoke, above, about glucose being
sometimes added to weak wines to in
crease their alcoholic strength. There is
great deal of falsehood in circulation
about this same glucose, it being repre-
sented as poisonous or unhealthy. This
is entirely untrue. Glucose is quite as
wholesome as any other sugar, but it is
only about half as sweet. Yet that the
difference is not very easily distinguished
is shown by the fact that honey is chiefly
glucose, and we are quite as apt to say as
sweet as honey" as to say cas- sweet as
sugar." The wrong about the glucose
business has been in selling it for cane
sugar, or its syrup as cane or maple syrup
Properly made, it is equally wholesome,
and we have never seen any analysis of
glucose made from corn that showed it to
be anywhere near as impure or unwhole-
some as even the best West India molasses.
What we have said of glucose is equally
applicable to oleo-margarine. We have
never seen particle of trustworthy evil
dence to show that this imitation butter
is not made from clean fat. The reliable
accounts that we have seen invariably
stated that it is made from the best suet
to be obtained, and that all the processes
are as neatly conducted as in the best
diaries. When we consider that oleo-mar-
garine must depend upon as exact re-
semblance to butter as it is possible to
make, in order to have market, and that
the better brands actually contain from
one-third to one-half of the best creamery
butter, 1t is the height of improbability
that impure or unclean suet would be
used, which would be sure to spoil the
flavor. The fraud in oleo-margarine, like
the fraud in plucoa A. consis Ia in ita hahn q