down."

"Well, isn't beer a food? Not that we care to advertise it, but--"

Hitt laughed. "When that fellow Claus smoothly tried to convince me
that beer was a food, I sent a sample of his stuff to the Iles
chemical laboratory for analysis. They reported ninety-four per cent
water, four per cent alcohol--defined now as a poisonous drug--and
about two per cent of possible food substance. If the beer had been of
the first grade there wouldn't have been even the two per cent of
solids. You know, I couldn't help thinking of what Carmen said about
the beer that is advertised in brown bottles to preserve it from the
deleterious effects of light. Light, you know, starts decay in beer.
Well, light, according to Fuller, is 'God's eldest daughter.' Emerson
says it is the first of painters, and that there is nothing so foul
that intense light will not make it beautiful. Light destroys
fermentation. Thus the light of truth destroys the fermentation which
is supposed to constitute the human mind and body. So light tries to
purify beer by breaking it up. The brewers have to put it into brown
bottles to preserve its poisonous qualities. As Carmen says, beer
simply can't stand the light. No evil can stand the light. Remarkable,
isn't it?"

"Humph! It's astonishing that so many so-called reputable papers will
take their advertising stuff. It's just as bad as patent medicine
ads."

"Yes. And I note that the American public still spend their annual
hundred million dollars for patent medicine dope. Most of this is
spent by women, who are largely caught by the mail-order trade. I
learned of one exposure recently made where it was found that a widely
advertised eye wash was composed of borax and water. The cost was
somewhere about five cents a gallon, and it sold for a dollar an
ounce. Nice little profit of some two hundred and fifty thousand per
cent, and all done by the mesmerism of suggestive advertising. Shrewd
business, eh? Nice example in morality. Speaking of parasites on
society, Ames is not the only one!"

"And yet those fellows howl and threaten us with the boycott because
we won't advertise their lies and delusions. It's as bad as
ecclesiastical intolerance!"

Carmen spent a week in Washington. Then she returned to New York and
went directly to Avon. What she did there can only be surmised by a
study of her reports to Hitt, who carefully edited them and ran them
in the Express. Again, after several days, she journeyed back