Edible substances evoke the secretion of thick concentrated saliva. Why? The answer obviously is that this enables the mass of food to pass smoothly through the tube leading from the mouth into the stomach.
I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.