"Oh," explained Mrs. Batholommey, still safe, and ever feeling safer, now that temperance was again the theme, "St. Paul referred to unfermented wine, you know. Every one ought to understand that. It is so hard to make people see the difference."
"One bottle would convince them," said Peter very gravely.
"No," Mrs. Batholommey corrected him with serene loftiness. "You do not quite get my point, dear Mr. Grimm. For instance, when the poets,—even good men like the late Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier—speak of 'wine,' they use the word of course in its poetical sense. They use it merely to typify——"
"Booze," growled McPherson.
"Good cheer," amended Mrs. Batholommey, withering him with a single frown. "And yet it is terribly misleading. I remember when we had the Walter Scott Tableaux and Recitations at the church last fall, and old Mr. Bertholf from Pompton was going to recite 'Lochinvar,' I had to suggest a change in the poem, lest the ignorant people in the village might get a wrong impression of dear Sir Walter Scott's principles. You remember the couplet occurs:
"'And now I have come with this lost love of mine
To tread one last measure, drink one cup of wine.'
"So I asked Mr. Bertholf to alter the words into something like this:
"'And now I have come with this beautiful maid
To tread one last measure,—drink one lemonade.'
"It left the poetry just as beautiful and it took away the dangerous reference to wine. Mr. Bertholf didn't like it very much, I'm afraid. But I insisted, and at last——"
"And at last," snarled McPherson, to whom the thought of any mutilation of his fellow Scotchman's verse was as sacrilege, "and at last, poor Bertholf got so mixed up that he clean forgot the silly rot you'd taught him. And when he came to that part of the poem, he stammered for a second and then blurted out: