Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/21

 image, and the whole table is alive with light and gladnessonly then does the Chief Priest bring on, in that splendid shrine, agleam with an hundred facets, the drink for which Boys are inapt and Heroes unsuitable. In his baize-keeled cradle the giant magnum moves slowly with all the solemnity pertaining to a religious rite around the brilliant woodway; then tongues are loosened, and the joy of life runs high. It is great and good, this antique use of drinking after dinner. What boots it that gourmets like Sir Henry Thompson declare against it? ’Tis dying, if you will; but it dies hard as things British are wont. It has its enemies. The cigarettea poor thing and anybody's ownmakes advance all but impossible: also a fatal fashion would seek to cast the great liquor from us, and,