1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

120 THE FLOWING BOWL daring and adventurous mirror-smashers and salt- spillers express the desire to take-on sake " in a moog." Vodka is the " livener " ofthe Russian peasantry, and is distilled from—what ? Plain Water. whether fortunately or otherwise, comes under the heading of "Strange Swallows." It is still consumed in prisons, and other places where sinners and paupers are dieted at the expense of the ratepayer. And hard as are the ways of the transgressor, his daily "quencher" is even harder. " Plain water," wrote a celebrated Mongolian of his day, "has a malignant in fluence, and ought on no account to be drunk." More especially if it be Thames water. I once saw adrop of this, very much magnified, displayed on a stretched cloth, in a side-show at the Crystal Palace. In that drop of water I counted three boa-constrictors, a few horrors which re sembled giant lobsters, and apair of turtles engaged, apparently, in a duel to the death. Three ladies in the front row of the stalls, at that exhibition were carried out, swooning. Whether cold water ought to be drunk or not, I am bound, as a tolerably truthful chronicler to remark that very few folk who can obtain any other sort of tipple do drink it. It has been claimed by the Brahmins that