Taste enjoyed in the mouth is good, and a good part of the pleasure of living comes from taste gratification, but taste that returns from the stomach and is belched by eructation or is lingeringly reminiscent in the mouth or nose is indicative of indigestion. Hence it is better to dissipate taste in the mouth, which is the sole region of taste. Spirits tasted into absorption in this way leave no odour upon the breath, and asparagus munched and tasted to the limit in the mouth, carries no odour to the urine. Even the stale and disagreeable odour of onion or garlic can be neutralised by saliva and killed in the mouth. It is extremely difficult to get observers to practise tasting taste out of liquids as the wine tasters do, and as the tea tasters _have to do or die_; or, at least, become useless in their profession. Once the efficacy of the liquid-tasting precaution in digestion is understood, however, to swallow anything but pure water without tasting it into absorption produces a shock. This care becomes instinctive quite easily and regulates itself automatically. It is also a distinct gain to the gustatory possibilities, which are very limited at best. When the body will tolerate spirits tasted into it--not poured into it--at all, which is not often when the nutrition is normal (only in damp or cold weather, as a general thing, and then in the case of the writer only at rare intervals, say two or three times a year), the spirit will mix quickly with the saliva and become neutralised sufficiently to excite the Swallowing Impulse. Continue sipping the spirit for a time and you will note that there comes a point where the saliva and the spirit do not mix, do not neutralise; the mouth becomes unduly full of liquid without any relaxation or invitation of the Swallowing Impulse; and the really instinctive inclination will be to _spit it out_. It is a clear indication that the body-_toleration_ has been fully taxed; there is no longer any bodily need for alcohol--in fact, there is no longer natural toleration--and the secretion sent down into the mouth is evidently mucous for a washing-out process, and is not alkaline saliva for assisting in a utilisation function. It is quite uncanny to observe the nicety of mouth-discrimination and the consistency of it as related to similar substances under similar conditions, if one learn to read it with precision and intelligence.