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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