THROUGH A GLASS LIGHTLY
antly, would have us eschew our Port as a fiery and a heady creature, the sure and faithful ally of the Old Campaigner, Gout. Yet these same weaklings, still constrained by a custom they abhor, are found offering at the dinner’s end the three fallen Graces—Port, Sherry, and Claret. Still the Triumvirate (for with wine there is no sex, only age and origin) goes its unhonoured round. For who greatly lusts after the cellars of moderate drinkers, men who too often buy at a venture? And especially is this the case with Port: in whose quest they betake them to their wine—merchant as one should go to his doctor, with medicinal rather than purely hospitable motives. Thus cometh in our midst the Old Tawny, long in the wood, a renegade and traitor, which hath imparted to dead
8
