Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or disadvantages of wine,--and I for one, except for certain particular ends, believe in water, and, I blush to say it, in black tea,--there is no doubt about its being the grand specific against dull dinners. A score of people come together in all moods of mind and body. The problem is, in the space of one hour, more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly exalted life. Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,--talk, alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now just where it was when "The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed," --when six great vessels containing water, which seems to have been carefully purified, so as to be ready for the marriage-feast, were changed into the best of wine. I once wrote a song about wine, in which I spoke so warmly of it, that I was afraid some would think it was written _inter pocula_; whereas it was composed in the bosom of my family, under the most tranquillizing domestic influences. ----The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous.--Can you tell me,--he said,--who wrote a song for a temperance celebration once, of which the following is a verse?-- Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair The joys of the banquet to chasten and share! Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine, And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine! _I_ did,--I answered.--What are you going to do about it?--I will tell you another line I wrote long ago:-- Don't be "consistent,"--but be simply _true_. The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to resist this grinding-down action.--Now give me a chance. Better eternal and universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made wives and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they should have honored, as they came reeling home from their debauches! Yet better even excess than lying and hypocrisy; and if wine is upon all our tables, let us praise it for its color and fragrance and social tendency, so far as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the closet and pretend not to know the use of a wine-glass at a public dinner! I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent." But a great many things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply because they are partial views of a truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a front view of a face and its profile often do.