There is an article which "smells to heaven," the acidiferous title of which glares in mammoth letters from every road-side, wherein the audacious proprietor obviates the necessity of alcohol for its preparation or preservation. It is merely fermented slops--"dish water," minus the alcohol. Take a few handfuls of any bitter herbs, saturate them in any dirty pond water,--say a barrel full,--add some nitric acid, and bottle, without straining! Here you have _Vinegared Bitters_! The cheeky proprietor informs the "ignorant public" that, "if the _medicine_ becomes sour (ferments), as it sometimes will, being its 'nature so to do,' it does not detract from its medical virtues." True, true! for it never possessed "medical virtues." The cost of this villanous decoction is _scarcely half a cent a bottle_! Soured swill! It is recommended to cure fifty different complaints! It sells to fools for "one dollar a bottle," and will go through one like so much quicksilver. "Try a bottle," if you doubt it. The "dodge" is in advertising it as a temperance bitter. Having no alcoholic properties, it in no wise endangers the user in becoming addicted to _stimulants_. Sarsaparilla humbugs are only second to the above. But a few years since an immense fortune was realized by a New York speculator in human flesh on a "Sarsaparilla" which contained not one drop of that all but useless medicine; nor did it possess any real medical properties whatever. THE DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY. To illustrate this point, we introduce the following conversation between the author and a "down east" farmer, in 1852:-- "It's all a humbug, is saxferilla!" exclaimed the old farmer, rapping his fist "hard down on the old oaken table." "Why, no; not _all_ sarsaparilla; you must admit--" "No difference. I tell you it's a pesky humbug, all of it." [Illustration: "IT'S ALL A HUMBUG."] Withdrawing his tobacco pipe from his mouth, he laid it on the table, and standing his thumb end on the board, as a "point of departure," he turned to me, and said,--