"
But nowadays the precious juice of a long-dead vintage is transferred
carefully into a cut-glass decanter, and stands side by side with the
sherry from a corner grocery, which looks just as bright and apparently
thinks just as well of itself. The old historic Madeiras, which have
warmed the periods of our famous rhetoricians of the past and burned in
the impassioned eloquence of our earlier political demigods, have nothing
to mark them externally but a bit of thread, it may be, round the neck of
the decanter, or a slip of ribbon, pink on one of them and blue on
another.
Go to a London club,--perhaps I might find something nearer home that
would serve my turn,--but go to a London club, and there you will see the
celebrities all looking alike modern, all decanted off from their
historic antecedents and their costume of circumstance into the every-day
aspect of the gentleman of common cultivated society. That is Sir Coeur
de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit;
there is the Laureate in a frockcoat like your own, and the leader of the
House of Commons in a necktie you do not envy. That is the kind of thing
you want to take the nonsense out of you. If you are not decanted off
from yourself every few days or weeks, you will think it sacrilege to
brush a cobweb from your cork by and by.
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