THROUGH A GLASS LIGHTLY
mysterious and painful globosities which are called chalkstones.
There is, indeed, a fashion to decry the wine, and he has suffered much from blight, and the roguishness of vintners; for when the demand in former years ran high, these sorry rascals substituted for the real Simon Pure low-priced fluids liable to turn acid, and so did he fall into disrepute. Also the First Gentleman in Europe in the early decades of this century, by cultivating and disseminating a preference for sherry, did much to put the nose of our glorious Madeira out of joint; for men are, alas! too apt to forget the glory of this Madeira and wholly to ignore his royal descent. It is a far cry to 1421, when Prince Henry colonised Madeira, the woody island, with grape stocks from Candia, and to this day the
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