The officer repeatedly stated, on presenting the wine, that that would be the last; but somehow there was always something new to be tasted, and something that we could not decline without giving offence. Before we got through, we tasted nearly every wine in the cellar, and finally asked to be let off. When we reached the foot of the stairway, we found it had shrunken greatly in size. We had descended without difficulty, but now it was necessary to move up edgewise, and I firmly believe, that if we had remained below much longer, the shrinking process would have made the staircase so narrow, and the roof above so low, that we should have been unable to get out, and might have staid there forever. Think of one’s terrible fate in being shut up in a wine cellar to die. [Sidenote: TURNING AN AMERICAN HEAD.] My companion wanted to sit down on the foot of the stairs and go to sleep, but I told him it was not a custom in Poland on visiting wine cellars, or, so far as I knew, in any other country. He then asked me to write to his friends, if I succeeded in getting out, and tell them to send money enough to buy out the concern to take it home to America. He would take cellar and all if he had to carry the whole city of Warsaw and the Ex-King of Poland in his trunk. He had a friend at New York who would just like this sort of thing. He would be willing to sell all his interest in the United States if he could only assemble his friends in that cellar, and get them as blind drunk as he was. I saw that he was wandering mentally, although unable to wander much physically, owing to the extreme suppleness of his legs. He began to chide me for taking so much wine, and said I ought to have followed his example, and drank nothing. The situation became alarming. There was the staircase growing narrower until it resembled a loophole in the wall of a fortress. I was very much inclined to sit down with my friend, and wait until the place grew larger. While thinking what to do, we were roused by the appeal of our officer comrade to taste of another wine, a very superior article from Hungary. We told him politely that we must refuse, intimated that we should feel much better without it, and if he could only plan some way by which we could get out of that cellar and reach our hotel, we should be very much obliged. He led the way up stairs. We observed that luckily they were large enough for him to ascend without difficulty, and finally we reached the space above. Once there we breathed more easily. We thanked our host for the attention he had shown us; we thanked him by shaking his hand, and keeping our mouths closed. To thank him in English would do no good, as he did not understand our language, and we were a little doubtful of our ability to pronounce our words correctly. I am sorry that my friend made so free with this ancient wine, as it totally incapacitated him from saying a word in Polish or any other language with which he was not familiar.