The story of the Marriage Feast at Cana must make sorry reading for any Prohibitionist; and the Young-Old Philosopher doubts not that it will be torn from the records in years to come. We shall not even be given the pleasure of reading about the jubilations of vanished times--times rich in banquets. Think of imperial Rome without golden goblets! They were as much a part of the feast as the fruit and the lights; and if we are to be deprived of the vicarious joy of dipping into the pagan past, might we not just as well renounce life entirely? Red wine will be as antiquated as the ermine and crowns of kings, my friend believes; yet who can deny the picturesqueness of the scepter and the court fool? They may not have been important, but they gave a glamour to dreary days. “And some of us may prefer them,” says the Young-Old Philosopher, “to the dandruff-covered collars of stupid senators and congressmen.” There is an old song of Abraham Cowley’s, written somewhere between 1618 and 1667, which must give pain to any Prohibitionist. Will they strive to Bowdlerize the anthologies, erase from literature so true and human a poem as this, which voices a thought almost as old as the world? It is after Anacreon. The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again; The plants suck in the earth, and are With constant drinking, fresh and fair; The sea itself (which one would think Should have but little need of drink) Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up, So filled that they o’erflow the cup. The busy sun (and one would guess By’s drunken fiery face no less) Drinks up the sea, and, when he’s done, The moon and stars drink up the sun: They drink and dance by their own light; They drink and revel all the night. Nothing in nature’s sober found, But an eternal “health” goes round. Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high-- Fill all the glasses there; for why Should every creature drink but I? Why, men of morals, tell me why? Think of losing from English literature lines like these, from the “Last Poems” of A. E. Housman: Could man be drunk forever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning And lief lie down at nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts. And so modern and exquisite a poet as Richard Le Gallienne has had much to say metrically of the follies of attempting to regulate by law the natural appetites of man. He sounds a warning in this tragic-comic ballade, spurning the busy-body reformers: They took away your drink from you, The kind old humanizing glass; Soon they will take tobacco too, And next they’ll take our demi-tasse. Don’t say, “The bill will never pass,” Nor this my warning word disdain; You said it once, you silly ass-- Don’t make the same mistake again.