uterne with the fish, claret with the roast, Burgundy with the
game,--champagne somewhere, anywhere, everywhere; port, grand, old
ruddy port--that has disappeared; no one understands it and no one
knows when to serve it; while Madeira, that bloom of the vinous
century plant, that rare exotic which ripens with passing
generations, is all too subtle for our untutored discrimination.

And if, perchance, a good wine, like a strange guest, finds its
way to the table, we are at loss how to receive it, how to address
it, how to entertain it. We offend it in the decanting and
distress it in the serving. We buy our wines in the morning and
serve them in the evening to drink the sediment which the more
fastidious wine during long years has been slowly rejecting; we
mix the bright transparent liquid with its dregs and our rough
palates detect no difference. But the lover of wine, the more he
has the less he drinks, until, in the refinement and exaltation of
his taste, it is sufficient to look upon the dust-mantled bottle
and recall the delicious aroma and flavor, the recollection of
which is far too precious to risk by trying anew; he knows that if
a bottle be so much as turned in its couch it must sleep again for
years before it is really fit to drink; he knows how difficult it
is to get the wine out of the bottle clear as ruby or yellow
diamond; he knows that if so much as a speck of sediment gets into
the decanter, to precisely the extent of the speck is the wine
injured.

In serving wines, we of the Western world may learn something from
the tea ceremonies of the Japanese,--ceremonies so elaborate that
to our impatient notions they are infinitely tedious, and yet they
get from the tea all the exquisite delight it contains, and at the
same time invest its serving with a halo of form, tradition, and
association. Surely, if wine is to be taken at all, it is as
precious as a cup of tea; and if taken ceremoniously, it will be
taken moderately.

What is the use of serving good wine? No one recognizes it,
appreciates it, or cares for it. It is served by the butler and
removed by the footman without introduction, greeting, or comment.
The Hon. Sam Jones, from Podunk, is announced in stentorian tones
as he makes his advent, but the gem of the dinner, the treat of
the evening, the flower of the feast, an Haut Brion of '75, or an
Yquem of '64, or a Johannisberger of '61, comes in like a tramp
without a word. Possibly some one of the