THE GREAT AMERICAN DRINK.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LII, Issue 9187, 6 September 1906, Page 2

THE GREAT AMERICAN DRINK.

♦ The New York Herald says the distinctive American drink is not the "cocktail," but the glass of soda-water, plai nor color cd. Soda-water is actually rivalling the saloon. In New York city there is a saloon to every 590 persons, and there is a "soda fountain" to every 535. Against this it has to be recollected that the fountain doe 3 not occupy a whole shop. It •bunks in," to use the elegant phrase of the Herald, with a chemist's establishment, a candy business, or a restaurant. Boston set «i« iasliion in 1870, anJ now soda-water is an American institution which follows the flag. In fact, it seems to flourish solely under the flag, for the article to be procured in Europe is said to be a poor sort of thing. The fountains, without which a shop cannot be sure o fdrawing trade, are remarkable structures of marble and onyx, with highly polished silver fittings, and as fast as a score of attendants can manipulate the taps and ingredients which go to . make a "Katzenjammer Kid" and a "Buster Brown," the drinks are quaffed by an ever-waiting throng. Onyx is the favorite material for fountains. "Onyx appeal* not only to the eye but to the imagination," says a catalogue poet. "Fanciful shapes of castle-crowned summits, of .wind-swept forests, of ragged 1 canyons' and gently sloping river valleys, seem pictwred in its surface; clouds set in all the varied hues of the sunset sky appear photographed in its depths; as if its pearly transparency w6me really due to a far-off liquid state, during the existence of which all things and lights and colors between it and heaven were reflected in its depths and held fast after its transformation into a solid. Aztec and Toltec constructed with it the altars" of their gods, and the,. older' long- vanished races have left many, specimens of it wrought and chißelled among the rains of their halfburied, cities and temples." Here^s a specimen of American advertising! , The American does not take hia soda-water-plain.- He' loves flavorings of various kinds, and human ingenuity has been ransacked to satisfy his taste. One catalogue gives, seventy different flavoring extracts in common use. Above all, he likes his drink cold— with either ice or ioe-cream in it. Iceis used at all seasons in drinks to an extent which appals tine foreigner, who wonders how American digestive organs can stand the strain. There are also dark hints that the manufacture of sodawater and its flavorings is not always carried 1 out tinder the most sanitary conditions, but the Herald remarks that "in the midst- -of life we are in Che midst < of • microbes, • and they are in the midst , of .us. Bfesides, an automobile may run over you aav you leave the fountain." It is interesting to notice that Boston once tried to evangelise England in the religion of soda-water, but failed. Buy one of. Sargent's Reliable Keyleso Watches, a real good' watch, well finished throughout in solid, nickel case; £1. guaranteed. R. W. Sargent, wa.t«hmak«r Hawera. — Advt.