pure wine.

"I have always used wine, and a little good brandy too, and am as free
from any inordinate appetite as your most confirmed abstainer; but then
I take especial care to have my liquor pure."

"A thing not easily done," said the clergyman, replying to their host.

"Not easy for every one, but yet possible. I have never found much
difficulty."

"There will be less difficulty, I presume," returned Mr. Elliott, "when
this country becomes, as it soon will, a large wine producing region.
When cheap wines take the place of whisky, we will have a return to
temperate habits among the lower classes, and not, I am satisfied,
before. There is, and always has been, a craving in the human system
for some kind of stimulus. After prolonged effort there is exhaustion
and nervous languor that cannot always wait upon the restorative work
of nutrition; indeed, the nutritive organs themselves often need
stimulation before they can act with due vigor. Isn't that so, Dr.
Hillhouse?"

And the clergyman addressed a handsome old man with hair almost as
white as snow who stood listening to the conversation. He held a glass
of wine in his hand.

"You speak with the precision of a trained pathologist," replied the
person addressed, bowing gracefully and with considerable manner as he
spoke. "I could not have said it better, Mr. Elliott."

The clergyman received the compliment with a pleased smile and bowed
his acknowledgments, then remarked:

"You think as I do about the good effects that must follow a large
product of American wines?"

Dr. Hillhouse gave a little shrug.

"Oh, then you don't agree with me?"

"Pure wine is one thing and too much of what is called American wine
quite another thing," replied the doctor. "Cheap wine for the people,
as matters now stand, is only another name for diluted alcohol. It is
better than pure whisky, maybe, though the larger quantity that will
naturally be taken must give the common dose of that article and work
about the same effect in the end."

"Then you are not in favor of giving the people cheap wines?" said the
clergyman.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders again.

"I have been twice to Europe," he replied, "and while there looked a
little into the condition of the poorer classes in wine countries. I
had been told that there was scarcely any intemperance among them, but
I did not find it so. There, as here, the use of alcohol in any form,
whether as beer, wine or whisky, produ