1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

GLORIOUS BEER ji have conveyed the bulk of my technical know ledge of brewing from standard works on the subject. It will be gathered from some previous remarks that all is not beer that's bitter ; and although it would seem impossible to find a cleaner, healthier, or more strengthening drink than the " pure beer " of commerce, brewed from good English or Scotch barley, Kentish hops, and fair spring-water, how about the wash sold in some licensed houses which is " fetched up" with foot-sugar, bittered with quassia, and mixed with salt and any nasty flavourer which is handy ? The old stories about the carcass of a horse placed in the London stout, to give it " body," and the mysterious disappearance of an Italian organ- grinder, together with his monkey and infernal machine, just outside a high-class brewery, are probably apocryphal. And although the ancients undoubtedly put a red cock-—-the older the better —into ale, on occasion, the nineteenth century Briton, for the most part, if the rooster be. too tough to serve as a boiled bonne louche with parsley-and-butter, usually makes Cock-a-Leekie of him. And thereby hangs a tale. When my firm was running a small chicken- ranche we once reared an unfortunate fowl, who had curvature of the spine, almost from the fracture of his shell. He. was a weakling, and his brethren and sistren, after the manner of birds, beasts, and fishes, who " go for" the anaemic and infirm, persecuted him exceedingly, and pecked most of his feathers off". Being a