MICHIGAN STATE POMOLOQICAL SOCIETY. 187 



udice which exists throughout the whole country is overcome. 

 It is because I know that it is a prejudice that I would openly 

 speak about it. Wine-growing countries are the regions where 

 temperance prevails, — where there is no drunkenness. There 

 are countries where the traveler is helped to a glass of wine to 

 warm and strengthen him ; they are countries where the 

 clergyman holds it to be an act of charity to give a glass of 

 wine to him who needs comfort. That is the character of 

 wine-growing countries. Here, the use of wine is considered 

 a sin, and men who use it are considered men not deserving to 

 be in the company of gentlemen. Now, I will say, that before 

 I came to this country, now twenty years ago, I had never 

 taken a glass of water over a meal in my life ; and I will say 

 another thing, that as long as I have lived (and I am sixty) I 

 have never been flushed by the use of wine ; I will not speak 

 of drunkenness. I know that my mother gave her children 

 (myself among the rest) wine as soon as they were weaned, 

 and I know that I have done the same with my own children. 

 But, gentlemen, until you have overcome the prejudice which 

 exists throughout the country against the use of the pure 

 juice of the grape as a daily beverage, you will never bring the 

 cultivation of the grape to its right foundation, and you will 

 not receive from that crop the return you are entitled to obtain. 

 In countries where the grape is cultivated as the principal crop, 

 the product from the sale of the grape is not the chief reward 

 for the culture ; it is the wine. And you will not be thoroughly 

 successful; you will not have that variety of grapes; you will 

 not have those diversified modes of cultivation, which will 

 secure its production on a large scale, until you have intro- 

 duced the use of wine as a daily beverage in every household, 

 and as the most wholesome beverage that can be added to any 

 other manufactured article of food. I wish not to be under- 

 stood as saying that the use of liquor is a thing uncommon in 

 wine-growing countries. It is only in those places where wine 

 cannot be had cheap that brandy or alcohol in various shapes 



