The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1885-02-07
Suppose We Had no Sugar.
The Cornhiu MAGAZINE.

The Cornhiu Magazine.
Besides the natural sweets we have taken
to producing artificial ones Has any house
wife ever realized the alarming condition of
cookery in the benighted generations before
the invention of sugar ? 1t is really almost
too appalling to think about So many
things that we now look upon as all but
necessaries -cakes, puddings, made dishes,
confectionery, preserves, sweet biscuits,
jellies, cooked fruits, tarts, &c-were then
practically quite impossible. Fancy at
tempting nowadays to live single day
without sugar; no tea, no coffee, no jam,
no pudding, no CAKE no sweets, no hot
toddy, before one goes to bed the bare
idea of it is too terrible And yet that
was really the abject condition of all the
civilized world up to the middle of the
Middle Ages Horace's punch was sugar
less and lemonless; the gentle Virgil never
tasted the congeniaI cup of afternoon tea;
and Socrates went from his cradle to his
grave without ever knowing the favor of
peppermint bulls eyes. How the children
managed to spend their Saturday as, OF
their weekly obozus, is profound mystery.
To be sure, people had honey bat honey
is rare, dear, and scanty it can never have
filled one-quarter the place that surgar fills
in our modern affections. Try for mo-
ment to realize drinking honey with ones
whiskey and water, or doing the years
preserving with pot of best Narborine, and
you get at a once common measure of the
difference between the two as practical
sweeteners. Nowadays we get sugar from
cane and beetroot in abundance, while sugar
naples and palm trees of various sorts af-
ford considerable supply to remoter
countries. But the childhood of the little
Greeks and Roman must have been abso-
lutely unlighted by single ray of JOY from
chocolate creams or Everton toffee. The
consequence of this excessive production of
sweets in modern times is, of course, that
we have begun to distrust the indications
afforded us by the sense of taste in this
particular as to the wholesomeness of vari-
GUS objects We can mix sugar with any
thing we ike, whether it had sugar in it to
begin with or otherwise, and by sweetening
and favoring We can give false palatable-
ness to even the worst and most indigesti-
bic rubbish, such as plaster of paris, largely
sold under the name of sugared almonds
to the ingenious youth of two hemispheres.
But in untouched nature the test rarely or
never fails. As long as fruits are unripe
and unfit for human food they are green
and sour as soon as they ripen they be-
come soft and sweet, and usually acquire
some bright color as sort of advertise
ment of their edibility. In the main, bar
the accidents Of civilization, whatever is
sweet is good to eat-nay more, is meant to
be eaten it is only our own perverse folly
that makes us sometimes think all nice
things bad for us, and all wholesome things
nasty. In a state of nature, the exact OPP
posite is really the case. One may observe,
too, that children, who are literally young
savages in more senses than one, stand
nearer to the primitive feeling in this re-
spect than grown-up people They unaf-
fectedly like sweets adults, who have
grown more accustomed to the artificial
meat diet, don't, as rule, care much for
puddings, cakes, and made dishes. May
I venture parenthetically to add, any APP
pearance to the contrary Notwithstanding,
that I am not vegetarian, and that | am
far from desiring to bring down upon my
devoted head the imprecation pronounced
against the rash person who would rob a
poor man of his beer. 1t is quite possible
to believe that yegetarianism was the
starting point of the race, without wishing
to consider it also as the goal just as tits
quite possible to regard clothes as purely
artificial products of civilization, without
desiring personally to return to the charm
ing simplicity of the Garden of Eden,