In a speech made some years ago Sir Michael Hicks-Beach observed that nearly one million sterling’s worth of tobacco was wasted annually by throwing away cigarette-ends and the stumps of cigars. But what would you, Sir Michael? Are the lieges to cremate their lips and singe their moustaches by smoking on to the (literally) bitter end? Whether or no, it is tolerably certain that there is an enormous daily waste in the matter of intoxicating drinks—without counting the wanton, although conscientious, destruction made by teetotal magnates. According to statistics—I shall not madden my readers with many of these—more than £138,000,000 {62} are spent annually in Great Britain on spirituous liquors. Half of this sum, it may be fairly stated, is spent in the provinces. It may also be taken as read that 5 per cent of beer and stout is wasted, in the way of froth, spillings, and leavings, and 3 per cent of spirits. This brings us face to face with the calculation that the value of our daily waste in drinks is nearly £6500. Carbonic acid gas is undoubtedly answerable for a lot of this waste. In _The Old Guard_, a musical piece produced at the Avenue Theatre some years ago, Mr. Arthur Roberts in his instructions to Miss Phyllis Broughton—who made a very comely stage barmaid—particularly enjoined her, when drawing ale, to use her left hand to bring the handle down. “The right hand,” he observed—of course it was all “gag”—“is for the froth.” And then he shewed her how to make half a pint of liquor fill a pint measure. Of course there be some professional imbibers who would object strongly and refuse to accept the froth programme; but on the other hand it pays the retailer, in the long-run. I am not going to re-tell the old story of the Quaker; but will only mention that in the early seventies the landlord of a favourite tavern in the Strand—a house of call for histrions, which has since then been transmogrified and adorned with much bevelled glass and carved walnut—once confided to me that he made every bit of £300 per annum out of his froth. His barmaids were all of angelic appearance, with most beautiful heads of hair (the girls wore plenty of it in those days) and a wealth of pretty prattle. And the {63} customers being susceptible, and liberal-minded, the rest was easy. Egyptian manuscripts written at least 3000 years before the Christian era shew conclusively that even at that primitive period the manufacture of an intoxicating liquor from barley or other grain was extensively carried out in Egypt. Probably the wretched Israelites got far more birch and bastinado than beer given them whilst engaged in brickmaking; but it is quite on the cards that Cleopatra, when fatigued with practising the spot stroke on her billiard-table, often commanded one of her slaves to draw her a pint of bitter with a head on it; and who knows but that her beloved Antony cooled his coppers with small ale?