Part 2

"Just a word before we take our wine," said Francis. "I saw Chestnut smile at the idea of a wine being bruised. I can tell him a story about that. We were dining at the Quoit Club, in Germantown, and were at table when Wilmington, who was in the habit of riding out to the club, arrived somewhat late. We came by and by to the Madeiras. I saw the general taste a wine, as if in doubt. At last he looked up, and said: 'Wilmington, this wine is bruised; you brought the bottle out in your coat-tail pocket--the left pocket.' We were soon convinced as to the wine having been thus shaken out of health; but his inference as to the left pocket puzzled us all, until the general asked some one to stand up, and to put a bottle in his own coat-tail pocket. Then the reason of my friend's conclusion became clear enough--however, I delay the wine."

"Well, here it is," said Hamilton, filling his glass. Then he passed the decanter to Wilmington, on his left, saying, "With the sun, gentlemen."

"A fair grape-juice," said the latter; "but a trifle too warm."

"And what," said Chestnut, "is a grape-juice? All wines are merely that."

"Oh, usually it is the product of the south side of the island, sometimes of one vineyard, but untreated by the addition of older wines; sweet, of course; apt to be pale. When a Madeira-drinker speaks of a grape-juice, that is what he means. But a Madeira--what we call simply a Madeira--is apt to be dry, and usually is the result of careful blending of wines and some maturing by natural heat."

"But in time," said Chestnut, "your grape-juice becomes a Madeira. Certainly this is delicious! How refined, how delicate it is!"

"Ah, you will learn," cried Wilmington. "But wait a little. A grape-juice never becomes what we denominate a Madeira."

"I don't agree with you," said the host.

"We are in very deep water now," laughed Francis. "I, myself, think the finest of the old dry Madeiras were once sugary maidens."

"Nonsense," said Hamilton, passing the next wine. "With the sun."

"Why with the sun?" said Chestnut, infinitely delighted by these little social superstitions and the odd phrases.

"Because it sours a wine to send it to the right," said Wilmington, dryly. "That is a fact, sir,--a well-known fact."

"Droll, that," returned Chestnut. "I wonder whence came that notion."

"It is a pretty old one; possibly Roman. The Greeks passed their drink to the right. Wine is a strange fluid. It has its good and its bad days."

"I am willing to say its moods," added Hamilton.

"I suppose," continued the older man, "that you will be entirely skeptical if I assure you that for women to go into a wine-room is pretty surely to injure the wine."

"Indeed, is that so?" returned Chestnut. "I am not surprised. In France women are not allowed to enter the great cheese-caves."

"Wine is very sensitive," said Francis. "I give you this story for what it is worth:

"A planter in the South told me that once two blacks were arranging bottles in his wine-room, and quarreled. One stabbed the other. The fellow died, and his blood ran over the floor; and from that day the wines in that room were bitter. You know that bitterness is one form of the sicknesses to which Madeira is liable."

This amazing tale was received with entire tranquillity by all save Chestnut, whose education was progressing. Meanwhile another decanter went round.

"I congratulate you," cried Wilmington, as he set down his glass. "A perfect grape-juice--new to me too. High up, sir; very high up"; and refilling his glass, he sent on the coaster. "Observe, Chestnut, the refinement of it; neither the sweet nor the bouquet is too obvious. It is like a well-bred lady. Observe what a gamut of delicate flavors; none are excessive. And then at last there remains in the mouth a sort of fugitive memory of its delightfulness."

"As one remembers the lady when she is gone," said Francis.

"Thanks," said the old gentleman, bowing.

"Am I wrong," said Chestnut, "in fancying that there is here a faint flavor of orange-water?"

"Well, well!" said Wilmington. "And this man says he has no palate! That is the charm of these lovely wines: they are many things to many lovers--have for each a separate enchantment. I thought it was a rose-water taste; but no matter, you may be correct. But Hamilton can give you a better wine. No grape-juice can compete with the best Madeiras. In wine and man the noblest social flavors come with years. It is pure waste to ask to dinner any man under forty."

"And now fill your glasses," said Hamilton. "Are you all charged? Your health, gentlemen! I waited for this wine;" and he bent his head to each in turn.

"That good old formula, 'Are you all charged?' is going out," said Chestnut. "I used to hear it when I came in to dessert at my father's table."

"One rarely hears it nowadays," remarked Francis. "But at the Green Tree Insurance Company's dinners it is still in habitual use. When the cloth is off, the President says, 'Are you all charged, gentlemen?' and then, 'Success to the Mutual Assurance Company.' You know, Chestnut, its insurance sign--still to be seen on our older houses--is a green tree. The Hand in Hand Insurance Company refused to insure houses in front of which were trees, because in the last century the fire-engines were unable to throw a stream over or through them. The Mutual accepted such risks, and hence has been always known popularly in Philadelphia as the Green Tree. After a pause, the Vice-President rises and repeats the formal query, 'Are you all charged?' The directors then stand up, and he says, 'The memory of Washington.' We have a tradition that the news of the great general's death in 1799 came while the Board of Directors was dining. From that time until now they have continued to drink that toast."

"I like that," said Chestnut. "These ancient customs seem to survive better here than elsewhere in America."

"That is true," returned Hamilton. "And what you say reminds me of some odd rules in the Philadelphia Library, which Franklin founded in 1731. We have--at our own cost, of course--a supper of oysters roasted in the shell at a wood fire in the room where we meet. A modest bowl of rum punch completes the fare. Old Ben was afraid that this repast would degenerate into a drinking-bout such as was too common in his time. He therefore ingeniously arranged a table so high that it was impossible to sit at it, and this shrewd device seems to have answered."

"When I became a director of the library," said Francis, "my predecessor had been ill for two years. As a consequence, he was fined a shilling for non-attendance at each meeting. This, with the charges for suppers, and for the use of the library as a stockholder, had accumulated a debt of some fifty dollars. Now, as Franklin found it difficult to collect such debts from estates, he made it a rule that the new director, while pleased with the freshness of his novel honor, should pay the bill of the man he succeeded; and accordingly I paid my predecessor's debts."

"How like Poor Richard!" said Wilmington.

"I was consoled," added Francis, "by the reflection that I always had the sad privilege of leaving my successor a similar obligation."

"Agreeable, that," murmured Wilmington. "But we are trifling, my dear Francis. What is next, Hamilton? Ah, a new wine. That is a wine indeed! A Madeira. Stay! I have drunk it before. A Butler wine, is n't it?"

"Yes. I misplaced the decanters; this should have come later."

"I see now," said Chestnut. "What is that curious aftertaste? Prunes? Is n't it prunes?"

"Certainly," cried Hamilton. "You are doing well, Chestnut. These noble old wines have a variety of dominant flavors, with what I might call a changeful halo of less decisive qualities. We call the more or less positive tastes apple, peach, prune, quince; but in fact these are mere names. The characterizing taste is too delicate for competent nomenclature. It is a thing transitory, evanescent, indefinable, like the quality of the best manners. No two are alike."

"Yes," said Hamilton; "and this same wine, in bottles, after a few years would quite lose character. Even two demijohns of the same wine kept in one room constantly differ, like two of a family."

"As you talk of these wines," said Chestnut, "I dimly recall the names of some I used to hear. 'Constitution,' a Boston wine, was one--"

"And a good vintage, too," said Hamilton. "It was the class wine of 1802."

"The class wine?" queried Chestnut.

"Yes. At Harvard each class used to import a tun of wine, which, after it was bottled, was distributed among the graduates. I still have two of the bottles with '1802,' surrounded by 'Constitution,' molded in the glass."

"A good wine it was," added Francis. "I know of no other which has been so little hurt by being bottled."

"There were others I used also to hear about. One, I think, was called 'Resurrection'--a wine buried for protection in the war; but some of the names of these wines puzzle me."

"The Butlers," returned Francis, "of course represent in their numbering the successive annual importations of Major Pierce Butler for his own use. Some wines were called from the special grape which produced them, as Bual, Sercial, Vidogna. As to others, it was a quality, as in the case of the famous apple-wine; or the name of the ship in which the wine came to us, as the Harriets (pale and dark), the Padre; others again were wines long held by families, as the Francis, Willing, Butler, and Burd Madeiras."

"Might I ask how long may a Madeira live, and continuously gain in value for the palate?"

"Ah, that depends on the wine," said Hamilton. "I never drank a wine over seventy years old which had not something to regret--like ourselves, eh, Wilmington?"

"I have nothing to regret," returned the elder man, smiling, "except that I cannot live my life over precisely as it was. I have neglected no opportunity for innocent amusement, nor--" and he paused.

"For some others," added Francis, amid a burst of laughter.

"I fancy," said Chestnut, "that Mr. Wilmington is of the opinion of Howell. You will find it in those letters of his which Walpole loved."

"And what was that?"

"It is long since I read it. I am not quite sure I can repeat it accurately. He contends in a humorous vein for the moral value of wine--I think he is speaking of Canary. 'Of this,' he says, 'may be verified that merry induction--that good wine makes good blood; good blood causeth good thoughts; good thoughts bring forth good works; good works carry a man to heaven: _ergo_, good wine carrieth a man to heaven.'"

"It sounds like one of Shakspere's fools," said Hamilton.

"I should like to read that book," added Wilmington.

"It is at your service," replied Chestnut; "and what else he says of wine is worth reading."

"Then let us get nearer to good works," laughed their host. "Here is a pleasant preacher. Try this."

"Ah," said Wilmington; "a new friend! Curious, that. Observe, Chestnut, the just perceptible smoke-flavor--a fine, clean-tasting, middle-aged wine--a gentleman, sir, a gentleman! Will never remind you to-morrow of the favor he did you last night."

"Needs time," said Francis, "and a careful fining--a little egg-shell and the white of one egg."

"One might risk it," said Wilmington. "But I would rather use a milk fining. It is more delicate, and the wine recovers sooner, unless the dose of milk be too large. But above all, Hamilton, be careful about the moon. A summer fining might be better, but touch it lightly."

"What on earth has the moon to do with it?" said Chestnut.

"If you want to spoil a Madeira," answered Wilmington, "fine it at the change of the moon. I spoiled my dark Harriet that way. Always fine a wine during the decline of the moon."

"I shall call this wine 'Smoke,'" said Hamilton. "Its name is really Palido. Certainly it has a great future. No better wine ever coasted along the shores of this table, and it has seen many vinous voyages. And now for a very interesting vintage. A little more bread, John. 'With the sun.'"

Wilmington ate a morsel of bread, rinsed a glass in the bowl before him, filled it to the brim, and slowly emptied it. Then he set it down deliberately.

"That is not Madeira, Hamilton; that is sherry. Some mistake."

"What!" cried Francis. "Wrong for once! It is Madeira, and old,--too old, I should say."

"I thought I should puzzle you. I have but little of it left, and it is new to all of you. Two generations have disputed its parentage."

"I might be mistaken," said Wilmington. "There are Madeiras so like some rare sherries as to puzzle any palate."

"I myself," said Hamilton, "have an inherited belief that it is Madeira. It is difficult to tell, at times, a very old Madeira from a very aged sherry. The Burd wine was remarkable because no one could decide this question. I have heard an old friend remark that the age of all great wines brought them together as to taste. Thus a certain Charles March grape-juice and Blue Seal Johannisberger were scarcely to be told apart."

"I leave you to settle it," said Chestnut, rising, well aware how long the talk would last. "The knowledge I have acquired has, of a verity, gone to my head,--I suppose because, as Miss M---- says, nature abhors a vacuum. Thank you for a delightful evening."

"But sit down for five minutes," said Hamilton, who had risen with his guest. "There is a beautiful story about this wine. I must tell it, even if it be familiar to Wilmington as his own best joke."

"Delighted," said Chestnut, resuming his place.

"Well," said Hamilton, "I will not keep you long. This wine came ashore on Absecom Beach from a Spanish wreck, about 1770. Then it was brought to Trenton, and my great-uncle bought it. All but a demijohn was buried in his garden at the old house, not far from Princeton, to keep it out of British stomachs. The one demijohn kept for use made the mischief I shall tell you of.

"Try that grape-juice, Wilmington. No? Then let Francis have his cigar. My Cuban friend shocks me with the late rise of prices. Eighteen dollars a thousand makes one hesitate."

"It does, indeed," said Francis. And soon the room was hazy with delicate smoke, as Hamilton continued:

"It was during the war, you know. My great-uncle Edward, who was with Washington, heard that his wife was ill. He got leave, managed to cross the Delaware, and in citizen's clothes made his way to his own country-house near Princeton. There he learned that she was not seriously ill, and as the country was full of British scouts, he resolved to go back next day to his duties in Washington's camp. The friend who had aided his adventure and was to set him across the Delaware again, came in about nine of the evening; and to aid them with the wisdom which is in wine, the demijohn of this disputed wine was brought out. Also a noble bowl of rum punch was brewed, and divers bottles were allowed their say, so that when Mr. Trent departed, Uncle Ned retired in some haste lest he should not be able to retire at all. It is probable that he left the candles to burn, and the hall door to close itself. About three in the morning, having snored off his rum and some wine, and hearing a noise, he put on his boots and a wrapper, and taking his pistols, went down-stairs. As he entered the dining-room there were candles burning, fresh logs on the fire, and facing him sat an English captain, with his dirty boots on my aunt's best Chippendale arm-chair, and in act to swallow a glass of wine. Uncle Ned stepped through the open door and covered the unexpected guest with his pistol, at the same time remarking (and he was really the most imperturbable of men), 'Perhaps you are not aware that you are making free with my best Madeira, and really--'

"'Don't shoot, I beg you, until I finish my glass,' said the captain, calmly. 'Did I understand you to say Madeira? Madeira! It's sherry--unmistakably sherry! Of course, I don't dispute the ownership.'

"'Very kind of you,' remarked Uncle Ned. 'There seems to have been a considerable transfer of ownership.'

"'That is so,' replied the captain. 'I am like Mary after she ate her lamb. "Every where that Mary went that lamb was sure to go." Permit me to apologize. The sherry--'

"'I have had the honor to assure you that it is Madeira.'

"'Madeira! Great George!'

"Now Uncle Ned hated the king, and loved his wife, and greatly honored his own taste in wine. Both his prejudices and his affection had been lightly dealt with, so he said tartly: 'There is only one Great George, and he is across the Delaware, and the wine is Madeira, and you have soiled my wife's chair; and I wait, sir, to learn your errand.'

"'I grieve, sir, to say that you will quite too soon know my errand, when I call up the troopers who are back of the house; or if you are in haste a shot from you will do as well. Meanwhile permit me most humbly to apologize to Mrs. Hamilton. I regret to continue to differ concerning the wine. As to your George, he is a very small rebel George. And now I am obliged most reluctantly to finish my unfortunate business; perhaps, however, we had better see the last of the wine; you may not have another opportunity.'

"These remarks somewhat sobered Uncle Ned, and he became of a sudden aware of the trap he was in. So he sat down, with his pistols convenient, and saying, 'With all my heart,' began to push the bottle. The Britisher was good company, and his temper was already so mellowed by wine that he was fast nearing the stage of abrupt mental decay which mellowness naturally precedes. He graciously accepted a tumbler of punch, which my uncle contrived to make pretty strong, and then numberless glasses of wine, enlivened by very gay stories, at which my uncle was clever. At last the captain rose and said with some gravity, 'The glasses appear to be all t-twins. We have made a night of it. When you make a n-night of it you improve the s-shining hours. And now my painful duty--'

"'One glass more,' said my uncle; 'and about that story. Pray pardon me, I interrupted you.'

"'Oh, yes,' said the captain, emptying a very stiff glass of rum punch, which by no means put its own quality into the lessening vigor of his legs. 'As I was saying, I knew a man once--very clever man; loved a girl--very clever girl. Man consumedly fond of liquor. Girl did n't know which he liked best, the wine or the woman. One day that girl--he told her a very foolish story about not askin' for wine if she would put a k-kiss in the glass. And that day, instead of a k-kiss she put a little note inside the decanter; and when he had drunk up the wine, and the men were laughing at this f-fashion of billet-doux, he broke the decanter with the poker and r-read the note. Give you my word, he never drank a drop after that; and the note, it was a very c-clever note, and it just said--' But at this moment the captain made a queer noise in his throat, and slipped down, overcome with rebel rum and much Madeira. Uncle Ned humanely loosened his cravat and sword-belt, and lost no time in creeping through the dark to his friend's house, where he found clothes and a good horse. He was back in camp next day."

"And so this was the wine," said Chestnut; "and the man and the maid are gone, and the wine is still here. But the end of the story?--what the girl said in her note?"

"Ask the wine," laughed Hamilton, "or ask some good woman. No man knows. We shall find Mrs. Hamilton and my daughters in the drawing-room. They must be at home by this time. You can ask them."

"With all my heart," said Chestnut.

"That is, if you have had enough tobacco," added the host.

"Just one more glass from the disputed bottle," said Wilmington, rising with the rest, and holding his glass between his face and the lights. "As our old table-customs seem to interest you, Chestnut, I give you a toast which I have drunk now these fifty years. Once it was a present joy; it is now but a sad remembrance. Quite often I say it to myself when I take my last glass in company; and always when I dine alone I say it aloud, or it seems to say itself of long habit."

With these words, the spare little, ruddy old gentleman bowed in turn to each of his fellow-guests, and last to his host, and then said, with a certain sad serenity of manner: "Here is to each other,"--and with a slight quaver in his voice,--"and to one other."

With this they turned from the table to follow Hamilton.

John gravely divided the mahogany doors opening into the drawing-room, and as Mr. Wilmington passed, murmured under his breath, "Dat wine 's a sherry, sar, sure 's ye 're born."

"Uncle John," replied Wilmington, "you are a great man. Here is a dollar," and slowly followed his host, humming under his breath the old drinking-song:

"The bottle 's the mistress I mean, I mean."

*"A LITTLE MORE BURGUNDY"*

The month of January, 1853, had been as dreary as only a midwinter bit of Paris weather can be. The Christmas season came and went, and left me and my friend Pierce, two friendless students, rather more homesick than usual, and a little indisposed to confess the malady, or to talk of those we loved, three thousand miles away.

This special night of the 21st of January I sat with William Pierce in the second story of an ancient hotel, which for democratic convenience had been labeled 47 Rue St. Andre des Arts. The name of the street--like others in the pleasant, wicked old Latin quarter--has some relation to the scholastic history of the Sorbonne; but who were the great folks to whom, long ago, this gray house belonged, I never knew. It was, in my time, a hive of students, and, standing _entre cour et jardin_, had a fine air of protesting against the meager trades around it, and the base uses to which it had come at last.

I never before, or since, lived in so vast a room as this in which I spent the most of 1853. The lofty, half-domed ceiling over us was still festive with the tangled dance of nymphs and shepherds who began their revel when the naughty regent was in power. I used to wonder what strange and wicked things they must have seen; what quarrels, what loves, what partings.

Tall windows, with balconies set in lovely traceries of stone, looked out on the street; on the other side of the room a deep alcove held my bed. Successive economies had narrowed the broad chimney throat to limits penuriously proportioned to the price of fuel; but two pensive caryatides still upheld the carved mantel-shelf, over which drooped pendent rose-wreaths of marble, pipe-stained, wine-tinted, and chipped.

It was never warm in this great chamber; but on the night in question it was colder than was comfortable even for the warm blood of youth. Over the meager nest of a grate we two sat, striving to conjure up a blaze from reluctant wood and coal. And this was rather with the hope that the fire might put a soul of heat into our _boiullotte_ and so give us material for a consolatory punch, than with any vain belief that we could ever be warmed again by what the French nation has agreed to consider a fire.

"Dismal, is n't it?" said Pierce.

"No," I returned, cheerfully, because now the _bouillotte_ began, uneasily, to hop a little on the coals, as if nervous, and to puff and breathe out steam at intervals. Seeing this, Pierce, who was by nature a silent son of New England, got up, with no more words, and went over to the far corner, and presently said:

"_Dame!_"

Now _dame_ is French, and has no harm in it, but is nearly as satisfactory as if it did not lack that final n, which makes the difference between mere Celtic impatience and English verbal iniquity.

"Well?" I said.

"The cognac is out."

"Is it?" I said. It was not a great calamity, but it did seem to add something to the sum of our discomforts.

"Have a little hot water?" said my friend.