alcoholic beverages. Champagne (or at least some variety of sparkling wine) is regarded as especially festive and is widely associated with New Year's Eve and other celebrations. Many people nowadays substitute sparkling fruit juice (often packaged in champagne-style bottles), and many authorities consider it perfectly acceptable to participate in a toast while drinking water. Toasting with an empty glass may be viewed by some as acceptable behavior for the non-drinker, though feigning to drink from such a glass would likely be seen as ridiculous. The person giving the toast should never do so with an empty glass, even if the glass contains nothing more than water. Teetotalers may view the drinking of toasts to be abominable and incompatible with their stand, as witnessed by this narrative from The Teetotaler (1840): At the anniversary of Cheshunt College, Sir Culling Eardley Smith was in the chair. This gentleman, after dinner, said "he had subscribed to the Teetotal Pledge, which of course was incompatible with the drinking of toasts;" when the Rev. J. Blackburn, (minister of Claremont Chapel, Pentonville,) said "he was not a teetotaler,—he was not in bondage,—and on that subject he had very recently been preaching." What could the Rev. Gentleman mean by this, but that he had recently been preaching against Teetotalism? Let the Rev. Gentleman look at drinking customs and their enormous evils, and ask himself if he has done his duty; or whether he expects to be pronounced "a good and faithful servant", if he continues even from the pulpit to encourage the great damning evil of this nation. Mr. Donaldson said that he was happy to add, that one of the most popular ministers of the day, the Rev. J. Sherman, gave Mr. B. a pretty severe and well-merited reply, by saying, "His brother Blackburn had said, he (Mr. B.) was not in bondage; he must be allowed to say, that he rejoiced that he (Mr. S.) had been enabled to break through the old and stupid custom of washing down sentiments by draughts of intoxicating liquors. He had thus become a free man. Mr. Donaldson concluded with some very severe animadversions upon the infamous conduct of Mr. Blackburn. It is a superstition in the Royal Navy, and thus the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Navies as well as the United States Navy that a toast is never to be made with water, since the person so