Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/88

 a gold that had no equal; dark red, rich, beautiful sparkling gold. These he placed in a great cradle in a little room hard by and near to the genial warmth of his kitchen fire, and then he bade the youngest of his hirelings swing it night and day with a ceaseless, tireless motion; and so with this warm and gentle movement did he in his fervent imagination and young heart contrive to give his beautiful peerless wine a sea voyage to the East Indies, in his days considered an essential part of an incomparable Madeira’s education.

And now, grown old and practical, with his ardent imagination shrunken in the light of base and common day, he has transferred the wine from the cradle to its nursery in the solid sandstone. And yearly from Michaelmas to Candlemas do