How shall I recount the catastrophe that ensued! We are all sinful men born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, and it seemed as if the wine had also dealt ample and instant justice upon us! Every soul present was struck through the heart and liver to the spine! All rose instantly from the table, speechless, aghast, and terrified with the effect! There was a napkin or handkerchief over the mouth of each, and if we could have articulated a word, we might have exclaimed with the sons of the prophets at the feast in Gilgal, 'Oh my Lord, there is death in the pot!'
But it was impossible to relieve ourselves by words; it was literally in tears and groans that the guests made for the door, vanished from the room, escaped from the house, and left me, appalled, transfixed, incapable of utterance, standing at the head of my deserted table, and feeling that 'No man said, 'God bless him!''
For a fortnight, three weeks, a month, no one of my guests had his mouth right! I was afraid to walk in the streets lest I should meet one of them; there was a paralytic stricture in the countenance of each member of that sad party; in some it wore an expostulatory, an admonitory, in some a remonstrant, and in all the look of a much injured person. I must except one gentleman whom however I did not get a glimpse of until six weeks had elapsed. He was a well-bred Frenchman, with all the suavity and grace of manner that belongs to his class and nation. I shall ever feel grateful to him for the first kind word I had received since the discomfiture; though I have sometimes had doubts, judging from the reïnstated appearance of his lips, whether he had taken more than half a glass: 'My dear Sir,' said he, 'when I had the pleasure to dine with you at your very agreeable party, there was one wine that had flavour very exemplary, ma foi!' I acknowledge it, I said. 'I think you did say it was American wine?' I did, I replied. 'What is the name if you please, as I pay much attention to the sujet of wines?' I named it. 'Will you be so very kind as write it in my tablet?' I prepared to comply; and telling him that I was not quite certain of the correct orthography of the word, wrote in large characters, the word, 'Scuppernong.'
John Waters.
[ON THE DEATH OF A CLASSMATE.]
'Oh! what a shadow o'er the heart is flung,
When peals the requiem for the loved and young!'
W. G. Clark.
We waste no sorrow o'er the verdant tomb
When whitened Age is called to meet its doom;
With shattered bark, on life's wild current driven,
The tempest, threat'ning death, but wafts to heaven;
And the freed spirit, borne on eagle wing,
Mounts to the regions of eternal spring.
No; 'tis not Age we mourn; life's course is run,
And soon, at best, must set its sinking sun.
We weep no sad adieu when infant years
Fly this cold vale, where joy still ends in tears;
Ere yet a cloud has dimmed their morning sky
Which hangs outspread so clearly blue on high;
That sky the tempest's wrath will soon deform,
And the day, dawned in sunshine, close in storm.
Oh! who would bid that wandering spirit stay,
Which seeks a fairer realm, a brighter day!