THROUGH A GLASS LIGHTLY
Liquid rejects its inherent properties: the stream mounts high and higher to the fount and source of things, even Aganippe’s self. Skyward soar the fancies, airier grow the wits, the summit is in view, and man is worthy his privilege. With Port we lose the senses, with Claret we exchange them. The commonplace becomes romantic, the accountant precedes a poet. He has spurned the brute earth, and his hand has touched the shoulder of Pegasus himself. That he cannot mount is no fault of the charger that is ready to bear him heavenwards. Not even Claret is omnipotent.
It seems out of the nature of things that man should be drunken, as we use the term, on so admirable a liquor, and so it has ever appeared to me a mistake that Ripton Thompson should
20
