Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/102

 things, nor things celestial, should vex the contents of your storied urns. If so be that you can have double doors, see to it that they are there, this one some four feet behind that other; so that the outer being closed ere the inner be set wide, one equal temperature of fifty degrees may be achieved, week in week out, throughout the ages. It is the habit of man to curse his wine merchant for sending another wine than that he sampled: yet it is very often not his wine merchant but his cellarage that has played the knave, and has given him the worse end of a bargain.

It is not less than marvellous that a good glass of wine is ever ours in town, for the urban cellar is not often ventilated, so that foul air and rank mists still penetrate through cracks and fissures