Such a course will prove a blessing to mankind, and we do not hesitate to say, that notwithstanding what fools or fanatics may say, preach or write, Americans, and particularly those of the Eastern States, who are probably the most practical people on the face of the globe, will before long adopt beer as their national beverage. In doing so they will but follow the example of the most civilized countries of Europe; and it will soon be recognized that every brewery and every beer saloon helps to loosen the grasp which alcohol has on any country where distilled liquors are habitually used. Thomas Jefferson, writing Dec. 13, 1818, to M. de Neuville in reference to intemperance and the use of light wines as a substitute for spirits, says, “No nation is drunken where wine is cheap.” Beer is yet less alcoholic than wine of any sort and has advantages of its own which will be discussed in due place. Experience shows that sound, wholesome beer at a moderate cost is the best catholicon yet discovered for intemperance. It weans a people gradually but surely from strong drink and brings happiness, content and morality in the place of dissipation and suffering. But it must be good, cheap and accessible, and the responsibility of making it so rests with our lawgivers. The poorer classes are those who need it most and cause most injury and loss to the state when for lack of it they consume ardent spirits—and these cheap and adulterated. In spite of all difficulties considerable progress has been made, as is shown by a consumption last year of more than nine million (9,473,361) barrels of beer, which is the best evidence of a step in the right direction towards national temperance. CHAPTER II. EARLY HISTORY OF BEER. It is impossible to say where and when the brewing of beer began, for the earliest historical records show its general use. It is mentioned by Manathos, High Priest of Heliopolis, an Egyptian of Greek education, who lived about 300 B. C. and by command of Ptolemaus Philadelphus translated the old Egyptian history into Greek. He says that the Egyptians, thousands of years before, had beer, and that its invention was attributed to Osiris, a divinity representing all the beneficent principles, also that celebrated breweries existed at that time at El Kahirch, the Cairo of Europeans, and at Pelusinum on the river Nile. The Greeks had their _zythos_ (beer) as also their wine of barley, _ek krithon methu_, and the _oinos krithinos_ as mentioned by Sophocles, Æschylus, 470 B. C., Diodorus of Sicily and Pliny. Xenephon in his account of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, written 400 B. C., mentions that the inhabitants of Armenia used fermented drinks made from barley. [Illustration: VIEW OF AN OLD EGYPTIAN BREWERY, _As described by Manathos (third century B. C.), High Priest in Heliopolis_]