Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/19

 reflection, the earlier thought, quick-leaping and unpremeditated, was best. Yes; Port is the only drink. Drink, mind you: not nectar, as some would have you believe! Nectar is but a vague and shilly-shallying poetasterism, which can by no stretch of language be applied to the nobler stuff. For the gods, and Primitive Man in their image, drank only when they were athirst. They never sipped their liquor. Not theirs (poor devils!) to roll it round the tongue, to toss it playfully against the palate, to let it trickle exquisitely down a gullet of educated sensibility. They quaffed it, they swilled it, they sluiced the drouth out of their systems with it. Nectar was mere stuff with a flow in it; a bulky flux which they drank from great bowls and tankards. They knew nought of