Dans les petites boites les bons onguens.
LESSON THE FIRST.
I.
THE pride of ancestry is a ridiculous and empty vanity, and reflects most wofully upon our own unworthiness. Instead, therefore, of minding who or what our fathers were, let us endeavour to conduct ourselves in such guise that our children shall not be ashamed of their fathers. Sir Thomas Overbury told a young sprig of fashion who had been boasting of his ancestry, that he was like a potatoe—for the only good that belonged to him was under ground. Genealogy has been of service to science in old countries, in furnishing data to the historian, and determining the legitimacy of claims to contested lands; but by the same means we are able to perceive that the noblest titles are traceable to some outlaw or artisan. It amounts to the same thing in the end; a ploughman once told a peer, "I have as good blood in my veins as you have, only I've lost the papers." Two small country squires were quarrelling, in England, about the antiquity of their families, when Squire Fitzsmith exclaimed with an air of triumph to his antagonist, De Brown, "I can prove that my family is more ancient and more respectable than your's; your people came in with the Conqueror, in one thousand and sixty-six, while it is recorded in the Domesday Book that I had an ancestor hanged for sacrilege in nine hundred and something."
II.
Few persons know how to drink wine. Any man with a mouthpiece can swallow the fluid, but a very select minority are gifted with palates capable of appreciating the subtle beauties of "the Bottle Imps." We do not drink wine now-a-days. We pour it down our throats; brutalizing our taste and confounding perception in an incongruous mixture that would disgust a duck, instead of revelling in the individual flavour of some one bright beverage. A wine drinker, after the removal of the cloth, should confine himself to one sort of wine, and one only, if he values taste and a cool copper. But at our public tables, we drink a different wine with every different friend; and in private life we submit to the fashionable folly of tasting a variety to please the pride of the host, or the conceit of some numskull who fancies a particular brand, yet most likely knows not the difference between a Johannisberger and the Rudesheim. The real wine drinker takes a glass of some light dry wine directly after his soup. This custom is universal with the French, and is called le coup d'apres, and is considered so wholesome a practice that the physician is said to lose a see by its use. A pure, light Sherry, sufficiently old to be free from the olor de bota, or smell of the wine skins, is a toothsome drink in the early part of the meal. If you would know the real flavour of sherry, chew it—fill your mouth with, the contents of your glass, and let the liqour tittilate your gums, and search out the secret places in your palate. With meats and game, imbibe the light wines of the Rhine and the Moselle; detain them for an instant at your tongue's tip, and tickle them for their flavour.— The veritable champagne, if you can get it, is the safest wine, and decidedly the most wholesome if drank towards the end of your dinner, when the carbonic acid gas assists digestion; the French never drink Champagne during the meal. If your patronize the sparkling brands, swallow your wine ere the effervescence subsides, and let it rush and foam down your delighted gullet while the resuscitated life is in its body. Do not wait sor the death of the dear creature, for no false action can restore the flavor of the mousseur. Remember, that all wines are like fish—they cannot be swallowed too soon when once exhibited to the light of day. If you are nasty enough to eat cheese, you may restore your palate by a glass of orthodox old port— smack it well against the roof of your mouth. Then choose your wine for the dessert, and stick to that sort for the rest of your sitting. Madeira is a noble tipple, if grown on the south side of the island; it may be obtained of a better quality here, in America, than in any other part of the globe—let it trickle over your tongue in gentle rivulets. Claret is an innocent article for imbibition in the dog-days, but its delicate flavour is lost on a vitiated palate.
