PORT
image, and the whole table is alive with light and gladness—only then does the Chief Priest
bring on, in that splendid shrine, agleam with an hundred facets, the drink for which Boys are inapt and Heroes unsuitable. In his baize-keeled cradle the giant magnum moves slowly with all the solemnity pertaining to a religious rite around the brilliant woodway; then tongues are loosened, and the joy of life runs high. It is great and good, this antique use of drinking after dinner. What boots it that gourmets like Sir Henry Thompson declare against it? ’Tis dying, if you will; but it dies hard as things British are wont. It has its enemies. The cigarette—a poor thing and anybody's own—makes advance all but impossible: also a fatal fashion would seek to cast the great liquor from us, and, ignor-
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