‘Very probably,’ he loftily replied. ‘But that’s a small matter. The genuine article is bad enough.’ ‘Bad enough!’ indignantly interposed my analyst’s mamma. ‘That’s Mr Grittles’s very best moist—threepence-three-farthings a pound!’ ‘I daresay it is. If it was fourpence, it wouldn’t make any difference.—Did you ever hear of the sugar-mite, _Acarus sacchari_’—— ‘No; I can’t say I ever did,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want to, either. We have had enough of this sort of thing, and I am not going to have any more agonies over every article we eat.’ I had again put my foot down. But it was too late. I had even forbidden my analyst, under penalty of forfeiture of his pocket-money for several months to come, telling us anything whatever about the food we eat or the drink we imbibe; but the mischief was done. I have lost my confidence in my fellow-man, and still more in my fellow-man’s productions. I may try in an imperfect way to protect our household. I may give the strictest orders that none but the refinedest of sugar shall be admitted into our store-cupboard; but who is to answer for the man who makes the jam and the marmalade, or the other man who makes the Madeira cakes and the three-cornered tarts? And how much is there that we have _not_ heard? I have silenced my analyst’s lips, it is true; but there is also a language of the eyes, and still more a language of the nose, and when, with a scornful tip-tilt of the latter, he says, ‘No, thank you,’ to anything, my appetite is destroyed for that meal. I can’t take a pill or a black draught without my disordered imagination picturing my chemist ‘pestling a poisoned poison’ behind his counter. I can’t even eat a new-laid egg or crack a nut without wondering what it is adulterated with. This is morbid, no doubt. I am quite aware that it is morbid, but I can’t help it. I am like Governor Sancho in the island of Barataria: my choicest dishes are whisked away from me—or rendered nauseous, which is as bad—at the bidding of a grim being who calls himself Analytical Science. He may not know anything about it, or he may be lying; but meanwhile he has spoilt my appetite, and the dish may go away untasted for me. Truly, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The moral of my painful story is obvious. I intend to bring up the rest of my family, if possible, to occupations involving no knowledge whatever. THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.