Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/144

 our thirsty progenitors for our own sufferings. Frailty, thy name is Heredity, and in thy name how many crimes have been committed? And yet, there was a hardiness in those forbears of ours which we cannot recall without admiration, though twitching toes and tingling blood check an exuberance of rapture. For they were mighty hunters and men of prowess in love and war, and we hear breathlessly of how, when they sat down to drink o’ nights, they bolted the doors and divested them of their shoes and stockings before the wine went round; and as each bottle was finished they dashed it against the door, breaking it into a hundred fragments, so that none of them should make exit before, in the fulness of developed dawn, the servants came in and carried the recumbent forms with slow