Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/106

 thing, and in decay it generates a gas no wine of delicate parts may breathe and live. Laths of wood, or, still better, slips of earthenware or terra cotta, alone should keep the crystal palaces apart; or you may imbed your happiness in quartz sand well washed in fresh water, in which wise you shall escape the outer darkness and enter upon the kingdom of light. Also remember that “A wine-cellar too hot or cold Murders wine before ’tis old”; and be your own cellarman.

A waitress, being a woman, cares nothing about wine and knows less. A butler either cares about wine, or does not. If he does, he drinks it; if he does not he gives it away. And let your cellar be a pattern of neatness, so that yourself can descend thereunto with pleasure, and