"Old Flank'em, of the Finishing Academy, by jingo!" exclaimed Sugarlips. "It's a mercy we didn't finish him! Why, he must actually have been on the point of turning the corner. I think we had better be off; for, if the old dominie catches us, he will certainly liberate our sparrows, and—put us in the cage!"
But, where's the spoil?"
"Spoil, indeed!" cried Sugarlips; "you've spoiled him nicely. I've an idea, Tom, you were too near, as the spendthrift nephew said of his miserly uncle. If you can't get an aim at a greater distance, you'd never get a name as a long shot—that's my mind."
PRECEPT.
Uncle Samson was a six-bottle man. His capacity was certainly great, whatever might be said of his intellect; for I have seen him rise without the least appearance of elevation, after having swallowed the customary half dozen. He laughed to scorn all modern potations of wishy-washy French and Rhine wines—deeming them unfit for the palate of a true-born Englishman. Port, Sherry, and Madeira were his only tipple—the rest, he would assert, were only fit for finger-glasses!
—He was of a bulky figure, indeed a perfect Magnum among men, with a very apoplectic brevity of neck, and a logwood complexion,—and though a staunch Church-of-England-man, he might have been mistaken, from his predilection for the Port, to be a true Mussulman. To hear him discourse upon the age of his wines—the 'pinhole,' the 'crust,' the 'bees'-wing,' etc., was perfectly edifying—and every man who could not imbibe the prescribed quantum, became his butt. To temperance and tea-total societies he attributed the rapid growth of radicalism and dissent.
"Water," he would say, with a sort of hydrophobic shudder, "is only a fit beverage for asses!"—"To say a man could drink like a fish, was once the greatest encomium that a bon-vivant could bestow upon a brother Bacchanalian—but, alas! in this matter-of-fact and degenerate age, men do so literally—washing their gills with unadulterated water!—Dropsy and water on the chest must be the infallible result! If such an order of things continue, all the puppies in the kingdom, who would perhaps have become jolly dogs in their time, will be drowned! Yes, they'll inevitably founder, like a water-logged vessel, in sight of port. These water-drinkers will not have a long reign. They would feign persuade us that 'Truth lies at the bottom of a well,'—lies, indeed! I tell you Horace knew better, and that his assertion of 'There is truth in wine,' was founded on experience—his draughts had no water-mark in 'em, depend on it."
He was a great buyer of choice "Pieces," and his cellar contained one of the best stocks in the kingdom, both in the wood and bottle. Poor Uncle!—he has now been some years "in the wood" himself, and snugly stowed in the family vault!