A few days later, my analyst remarked: ‘I don’t think much of this milk;’ and he forthwith appropriated a sample for analytical purposes; but, happily, was compelled to own that it wasn’t quite so bad as he expected. It had more than its proper proportion of water; but that _might_ arise—he charitably suggested—from the cow being unwell. To make up the deficiency, it had been fortified with treacle and coloured with arnatto, but these my analyst appeared to regard as quite every-day falsifications. ‘It’s a rascally shame,’ I said. ‘If one can’t put faith in the milk-jug, it’s a bad lookout for the Blue Ribbon gentlemen. However, let us hope that the tea and coffee are all right.’ ‘Not likely!’ he rejoined. ‘Nearly all tea is “faced,” as they call it, more or less, and the facing is itself an adulteration. As for coffee, you don’t expect to get _that_ pure, do you? It’s sure to be mixed with chicory, anyhow, and very probably with roasted acorns, beans, mahogany sawdust, or old tan. Baked horse-liver occasionally; but that’s an extreme case. If by any remote chance there wasn’t anything wrong in the original coffee, you get it in the chicory; and very often there are adulterations in both; so you get ’em twice over.’ ‘If that’s the case, no more ground coffee for me. We’ll grind our own, and then we are sure to be safe.’ ‘You mustn’t make too cocksure of that. Some years ago, an ingenious firm took out a patent for a machine to mould chicory into the shape of coffee-berries. Smart chaps those! And of course they can put anything they like into the chicory before they work it up.’ ‘That’s pleasant, certainly. Then how is one to secure pure coffee?’ ‘You can’t secure it, except by sending a sample to us, or some other shop of the same sort, to have it analysed; and if it’s wrong, prosecute your grocer for adulteration. After doing that a few times, he might find it didn’t pay, and give it up.’ ‘And how much would that cost?’ ‘Analysis of a sample of coffee, one guinea; analysis of butter, five guineas; analysis of milk, one guinea; analysis of tea, one guinea. Those are the regular charges for private analyses.’ ‘Rather expensive, it seems.—And how much would it cost to prosecute?’ ‘Ah, that I can’t tell you,’ said my analyst. ‘Another fiver, or more, I daresay.—But look at the satisfaction.’ I did look at it, but ultimately decided to give my grocer the benefit of the doubt, and cherish a fond hope that he was better than his fellows. The subject dropped. But a few days later, there chanced to be apple-pudding on the table. With the dish in question my analyst had always been in the habit of consuming brown sugar, and a good deal of it. Now, however, on the sugar-basin—best Demerara—being offered to him, he put on an expression as if he had been invited to partake of black draught. ‘Raw sugar! No, thank you.’ ‘Hillo, what’s wrong with the sugar? Is that adulterated too?’