A friend of mine once gave the proprietor of the Astor House, for courtesies extended to him, a dozen of his finest Madeira. He had the curiosity years after to ask his host of the Astor what became of this wine. He replied, “Daniel Webster came to my house, and I opened a bottle of it for him, and he remained in the house until he had drunk up every drop of it.” This was the famous “Butler 16.” As in painting there are the Murillo and Correggio schools, the light ethereal conceptions of womanhood, as against the rich Titian coloring; so in Madeira, there is the full, round, strong, rich wine, liked by some in preference to the light, delicate, straw-colored, rain-water wines. Philadelphians first took to this character of wine. They judiciously “fined” their wine, and produced simply a perfect Madeira,--to be likened to the best Johannisberg, and naturally so, it having similar qualities, as it is well known that the Sercial Madeira, the “king pin” of all Madeiras, was raised from a Rhine grape taken to the Island of Madeira. And here let me say, that “fining,” by using only the white of a perfectly fresh egg and Spanish clay, is proper and judicious, but milk is ruinous. The eggs in Spain are famous, and are thus used. In Savannah and Charleston, from 1800 up to our Civil War, afternoon wine parties were the custom. You were asked to come and taste Madeira, at 5 P.M., _after your dinner_. The hour of dining in these cities was then always 3 P.M. The mahogany table, which reflected your face, was set with finger bowls, with four pipe-stem glasses in each bowl, olives, parched ground nuts and almonds, and half a dozen bottles of Madeira. There you sat, tasted and commented on these wines for an hour or more. On one occasion, a gentleman, not having any wine handy, mixed half “Catherine Banks” and half “Rapid.” On tasting the mixture, a great wine expert said if he could believe his host capable of mixing a wine, he would say it was “half Catherine Banks and half Rapid.” This was after fifteen men had said they could not name the Madeira. A distinguished stranger having received an invitation to one of these wine parties from the British Consul, replied, “Thanks, I must decline, for where I dine I take my wine.” The oldest and largest shippers of Madeira were the Newton Gordons, who sent the finest Madeiras to Charleston and Savannah. From 1791 to 1805, their firm was Newton Gordon, Murdock, & Scott. One hundred and ten years ago, they sent five hundred pipes of Madeira in one shipment to Savannah. These wines sent there were the finest Sercials, Buals, and Malmseys. All those wines were known as extra Madeiras. The highest priced wine, a Manigult Heyward wine, I knew forty years ago; it was ninety years old--perfect, full flavored, and of good color and strength. In Charleston and Savannah from 1780 to 1840, almost every gentleman ordered a pipe of wine from Madeira. I know of a man who has kept this up for half a century.