1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

138 THE FLOWING BOWL pocket the key thereof. Many of the guests slept where they fell, "repugnant to command," like the sword of Pyrrhus ; whilst others would be fastened in the interior of their chariots at a later hour. Even in the late fifties, the estimable divine with whom I was studying the beauties of the classics, would on the frequent occasion of a dinner-party provide one bottle of port per head, for his guests, in addition to hock, cham pagne, and sherry ; and the writer, then a boy of fifteen, was included amongst the " heads." But as the stone age succeeded the ice age, as the iron age succeeded the stone age, and as the gold age, and the railway age, and the rotten company age succeeded the iron age, so have the whisky age, and the " small bottle " age, and the gin-and-bitters age almost wiped out the age when man drank, talked, and thought port. Our ancestors were immoderate in their potations but, as far as wine went, these were but rarely indulged in until after sundown, although the Briton would frequently wash his breakfast down with ale of the strongest. And it is difficult to believe that the evil habit of "nipping," at all hours of the day, which now prevails in some circles—a habit which is mainly due to the break-neck pace at which life is pursued—is either more conducive to health or intellectuality, or morality than the after-dinner debauch of a century ago. The "hot and heady" wine is (or, rather, was) produced chiefly in a mountainous district of Portugal called Cima de Douro. The wine is largely mixed with spirit even during fermen-