"This wine," Mr. Nies said, "is listed on our wine card at $6.00 per bottle. It is not the best Madeira that we have, although it is a very fine one. Recently we served a bottle of Thompson's Auction Madeira, of which the year is not recognizable on the label, but which to my knowledge was an old wine forty years ago. This wine brought $25.00 a bottle and was worth it. "The Peter Domecq Sherry of 1818 does not figure on our wine list as we have but a few bottles left. It is $20.00 a bottle. "The prices brought to-day by old Madeiras and Sherries do not represent their real values. One has but to look at the compound interest of savings banks to realize that these wines should be selling at four times the price they are; but unfortunately, since the advent of Scotch whisky in the American market, the American palate seems to have deteriorated, and if the wines were listed at the price they ought to bring, we could not sell them. As it is, the demand for the very rare old wines is irregular and infrequent. We keep them principally to preserve our reputation; not for the money there is in it." CHAPTER XXIX HISTORY AND ARISTOCRACY The cool shade of aristocracy.... --SIR W.F.P. NAPIER. Just now, when we are being unpleasantly awakened to the fact that our vaunted American melting-pot has not been doing its work; when some of us are perhaps wondering whether the quality of metal produced by the crucible will ever be of the best; it is comforting to reflect that a city whose history, traditions and great names are so completely involved with Americanism in its highest forms, a city we think of as ultra-American, is peculiarly a melting-pot product.