"Oh! I have the _Vintners' Guides_ all by heart, I can assure you," continued Swiggs; "and now that I'm out of the business, and never likely to be in it again, I don't mind telling you a secret or two. Let us begin with the beer. In the first place the brewer adulterates it, to save his malt and hops; and then the publican adulterates it, to increase its quantity. _His_ business is to make one butt of beer into two—aye, and sometimes three. Ha! ha! Now, how do you think he does it? He first deluges it with water: then, of course, it's so weak and flat that no one could possibly drink it. It wants alcohol, or spirit in it; it wants the bitter flavour; it wants pungency; it wants age; and it wants froth. All these are supplied by means of adulteration. Cocculus indicus, henbane, opium, and Bohemian rosemary are used instead of alcohol: these are all poisons; and the Bohemian rosemary is of so deadly a nature, that a small sprig produces a raving intoxication. Ha! ha! that's good so far! Then aloes, quassia, wormwood, and gentian supply the place of hops, and give bitterness to the hell-broth. Ginger, cassia-buds, and capsicum, produce pungency. Treacle, tobacco-juice, and burnt sugar give it colour. Oil of vitriol not only makes it transparent, but also imparts to it the taste of age; so that a butt so doctored immediately seems to be two years old. I needn't tell you what sort of a poison oil of vitriol is: I don't want to suggest the means of suicide—ha! ha! But when the brew has gone so far, it wants the heading—that froth, you know, which you all fancy to be a proof of good beer. Alum, copperas, and salt of tartar will raise you as nice a heading as ever you'd wish to dip your lips in." "You don't mean to say all that's true, Swiggs?" exclaimed the Buffer; "for though I ain't partickler, I don't think I shall ever like porter again." "True!" ejaculated the old man, contemptuously: "it's as true as you're sitting there! But there's a dozen other ingredients that go into the stuff you lap up so pleasantly, and pay for as _beer_. What do you think of extract of poppies, coriander, nux vomica, black extract, Leghorn juice, and bitter beans? But all these names are Greek to you. They ain't to the publicans, though—ha! ha! Why half the poor people that go to lunatic asylums, are sent there by the poison called beer." "What have you got to say agin blue ruin, old feller?" demanded a Knacker, who was regaling himself with a glass of gin-and-water.