"'On the contrary, we just entirely despise her and her ways, and should have discarded her way back but for the prejudices of the consuming public. It's just like this--the consumers still believe in natural products, and so we have to go on reproducing them instead of starting right away on our own lines and bringing out new and original commodities far in advance of anything Nature can do. How we're stultified you'll see as we work through. We just have to copy, anyway, in place of originating. We make oysters, for example. Now quite a while ago, our head chemist Major Madison B. Jefferson invented a new edible way, finer in every essential than the oyster; but the consumers wouldn't have it: they shied at it, and declared it wasn't wholesome; and we had the whole stock on our hands, and had to vat it down again, and recolour it, and make tomatoes of it. Then they took it down and just chaired it round. Of course, we have to say we _grow_ the products--that's another effect of popular prejudice; if we had said we made those tomatoes, the public would have started right off again, and talked of "adulteration," although our tomatoes whip Nature's by 50 per cent, in all the elements of nutrition and flavour. Just taste this one.' "We hesitated, and the director, perceiving it, promptly consumed another from the same case. Thus reassured, we ventured to nibble at the artificial vegetable, and found it excellent in every respect--decidedly superior to the natural product, as he had stated. "'But,' we asked, 'do you not suffer considerable losses when these products--necessarily perishable in the natural course of things--begin to decay?' [Illustration: "JUST TASTE THIS ONE."] "'That's just another point where we show our superiority to Nature. _Our_ products _don't_ decay; on the contrary, they improve by keeping. Here is a tomato seven years old,' he continued, taking down another case. 'Try it.' "We did. The other was not to be compared with it. The older tomato had matured and mellowed, the skin having a finer colour and lovelier gloss, the flesh possessing a firmer body and more delicate flavour; it was far in advance of any tomato we had ever conceived. "'Wonderful!' we exclaimed. "'A very simple matter,' said the director. 'All that is required is a thorough mastery of chemistry. In all our goods we employ a special patent preservative of our own, which is naturally a secret. We calculate it to be worth one hundred and fifty quadrillions of dollars. "'But let us show you how we make oysters! See, these are the tanks which contain the mixture--the compound which forms the body of the bivalve. This tank contains the beard-mixture; and this one the gristle.' "'And what are the principal ingredients?'