class="pnext">"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