“And besides that, you know how kinder flat raw milk tastes—­kinder insipid and mean.  Now, Prof.  Huxley, he says that there is only one thing that will vivify milk and make it luxurious to the palate, and that is water.  Give it a few jerks under the pump, and out it comes sparkling and delicious, like nectar.  I dunno how it is, but Prof.  Huxley says that it undergoes some kinder chemical change that nothing else’ll bring about but a flavoring of fine old pump-water.  You know the doctors all water the milk for babies.  They know mighty well if they didn’t those young ones’d shrink all up and sorter fade away.  Nature is the best judge.  What makes cows drink so much water?  Instinct, sir—­instinct.  Something whispers to ’em that if they don’t sluice in a little water that caseine’d make ’em giddy and eat ’em up.  Now, what’s the odds whether I put in the water or the cow does?  She’s only a poor brute beast, and might often drink too little; but when I go at it, I bring the mighty human intellect to bear on the subject; I am guided by reason, and I can water that milk so’s it’ll have the greatest possible effect.

“Now, there’s chalk.  I know some people have an idea that it’s wrong to fix up your milk with chalk.  But that’s only mere blind bigotry.  What is chalk?  A substance provided by beneficent nature for healing the ills of the human body.  A cow don’t eat chalk because it’s not needed by her.  Poor uneducated animal! she can’t grasp these higher problems, and she goes on nibbling sour-grass and other things, and filling her milk with acid, which destroys human membranes and induces colic.  Then science comes to the rescue.  Professor Huxley tells us that chalk cures acidity.  Consequently, I get some chalk, stir it in my cans and save the membranes of my customers without charging them a cent for it—­actually give it away; and yet they talk about us milkmen ’sif we were buccaneers and enemies of the race.

“But I don’t care.  My conscience is clear.  I know mighty well that I have a high and holy mission to perform, and I’m going to perform it if they burn me at the stake.  What do I care how much this pump costs me if it spreads blessings through the community?  What difference does it make to a man of honor like me if chalk is six cents a pound so long as I know that without it there wouldn’t be a membrane in this community?  Now, look at the thing in the right light, and you’ll believe me that before another century rolls around a grateful universe will worship the memory of the first milkman who ever had a pump and who doctored his milk with chalk.  It will, unless justice is never to have her own.”

Then Mr. Biles rigged the sucker in the pump, toned up a few cans of milk, corrected the acidity, and went into the house to receipt the judge’s bill.