t of deference to our host, who seemed once or twice
to be feeling a little nervous about the continued propriety of our
behavior in the presence of his respectable guests. To make matters
worse, we had dined at a sensible hour. When the bottles made their
first round at dessert, the clock on the mantel-piece only struck eight.
I counted the strokes, and felt certain, from the expression of his
face, that the other junior guest, who sat on one side of me at the
round table, was counting them also. When we came to the final eight, we
exchanged looks of despair. "Two hours more of this! What on earth is
to become of us?" In the language of the eyes, that was exactly what we
said to each other.

The wine was excellent, and I think we all came separately and secretly
to the same conclusion--that our chance of getting through the evening
was intimately connected with our resolution in getting through the
bottles.

As a matter of course, we talked wine. No company of Englishmen can
assemble together for an evening without doing that. Every man in this
country who is rich enough to pay income-tax has at one time or other
in his life effected a very remarkable transaction in wine. Sometimes he
has made such a bargain as he never expects to make again. Sometimes
he is the only man in England, not a peer of the realm, who has got a
single drop of a certain famous vintage which has perished from the face
of the earth. Sometimes he has purchased, with a friend, a few last left
dozens from the cellar of a deceased potentate, at a price so exorbitant
that he can only wag his head and decline mentioning it; and, if you
ask his friend, that friend will wag his head, and decline mentioning it
also. Sometimes he has been at an out-of-the-way country inn; has found
the sherry not drinkable; has asked if there is no other wine in the
house; has been informed that there is some "sourish foreign stuff
that nobody ever drinks"; has called for a bottle of it; has found it
Burgundy, such as all France cannot now produce, has cunningly kept his
own counsel with the widowed landlady, and has bought the whole stock
for "an old song." Sometimes he knows the proprietor of a famous tavern
in London, and he recommends his one or two particular friends, the
next time they are passing that way, to go in and dine, and give his
compliments to the landlord, and ask for a bottle of the brown sherry,
with the light blue--as distinguished from the dark blue-