Mr. Walter, having suggested in his speech on temperance that
innkeepers would do well to provide milk, barley-water, draught lemonade, tea, coffee, and other non-intoxicating beverages, as well as beer and wine, for those of their customers who might prefer tho milder fluids, a suggestion has at once been made that these fluids should also be provided freely at dinner-parties, for all those who, seeing them named in the menu, or having them offered by the servants, might prefer them to wine. But the difficulty is that in such oases the offer of cheap fluids would certainly be taken as a hint by nine-tenths of ordinary guests that theii hosts would rather have them accept the inexpensive drink. In some parts of the country, a man cannot pass the de- canters with the stoppers in them without being suspected of such parsimony ; and certainly while guests are thus suspicious, hosts will hardly care to do anything that would warrant such sus- picion. As it is, however, there are few dinner-tables where the devotee of seltzer water, apollinaris water, and the re t, cannot get it, if he pleases, by a word to the servants.
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