By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY
From The Pictorial Review
Copyright, 1918, by The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1919, by William Dudley Pelley.
In this little Vermont town of Paris, on the top floor of the red-brick post-office block, over half a century have been located the quarters of Farrington Post, Paris Chapter, G. A. R.
In the rooms of Farrington Post—under a glass case filled with countless other relics belonging to Captain Jonathan Farrington’s company, that marched away one hundred and seven strong that forenoon in ’61—has been kept a bottle of rare old wine.
That wine was old when those stalwart young Vermonters who followed Captain John Farrington were children. Through half a century it has occupied its place in that glass case; during that long time it has been viewed by many visitors to our town; over and over again has the story of “The Toast to Forty-five” been told until that double-quart of priceless vintage has become one of our chief sights of interest to the stranger within the gates. It was not through accident or chance that this bottle of wine was saved. Up to last August there was a pretty sentiment connected with that bottle of wine and why it should have been preserved thus throughout the years.
Up to last August, indeed! Because that bottle is no longer under the glass case in the Grand Army rooms in the post-office block. It has been taken from among those relics of yesterday; the seal has been broken; the contents have been poured out. Glistening red as the blood which those lads of ’61 shed for the principles in which they believed, that liquor was consumed in the pledging of a toast.
When the homefolks suggested that the county give a dinner to the returned heroes on the sixteenth day of August, 1866—Bennington Battle Day and a holiday in Vermont always—Dashing Captain Jack Fuller was not the one to quash the suggestion. “Dashing Jack” had been the man to take John Farrington’s place when John lost his life at Gettysburg. He was a great dude, was Captain Jack; a lover of the dramatic and the spectacular; with the pomp of soldiering verily in his blood and the vanity of many generations of Fullers in his fiber.