The Bombazine uttered this with a sugary sourness, as if the words had been steeped in a solution of acetate of lead.—­The boys of my time used to call a hit like this a “side-winder.”

—­I must finish this woman.—­

Madam,—­I said,—­the Great Teacher seems to have been fond of talking as he sat at meat.  Because this was a good while ago, in a far-off place, you forget what the true fact of it was,—­that those were real dinners, where people were hungry and thirsty, and where you met a very miscellaneous company.  Probably there was a great deal of loose talk among the guests; at any rate, there was always wine, we may believe.

Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or disadvantages of wine,—­and I for one, except for certain particular ends, believe in water, and, I blush to say it, in black tea,—­there is no doubt about its being the grand specific against dull dinners.  A score of people come together in all moods of mind and body.  The problem is, in the space of one hour, more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly exalted life.  Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,—­talk, alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now just where it was when

          The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed,

—­when six great vessels containing water, the whole amounting to more than a hogshead-full, were changed into the best of wine.  I once wrote a song about wine, in which I spoke so warmly of it, that I was afraid some would think it was written inter pocula; whereas it was composed in the bosom of my family, under the most tranquillizing domestic influences.

—­The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous.—­Can you tell me,—­he said,—­who wrote a song for a temperance celebration once, of which the following is a verse?

     Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair
     The joys of the banquet to chasten and share! 
     Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine,
     And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine!

I did,—­I answered.—­What are you going to do about it?—­I will tell you another line I wrote long ago:—­

     Don’t be “consistent,”—­but be simply true.

The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things:  first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface.  It is hard work to resist this grinding-down action.—­Now give me a chance.  Better eternal and universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made wives and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they should have honored, as they came