Raisins. 123 



The classical authors likewise allude to raisins, as when 

 the nymph in Theocritus, who prefers maidenhood to 

 an ill-assorted marriage, and who knows that age has its 

 blessedness as well as youth, uses the happy metaphor 

 that grapes, though dried into raisins, are still delicious, 

 (xxvii. 9.) Just as at the present day, so is it plain 

 that there were loveable "old maids" long before two 

 thousand years ago. Many an " old maid " among those 

 laughed at by the pert, the ignorant, and the vulgar, is 

 what we find her because too high-minded, too recherche 

 in her gentle and educated tastes to have been satisfied 

 with any one of the opportunities of marriage she had in 

 the bygones. She has never, in a word, condescended to 

 marry. Happiness does not consist in being married, 

 but in a contented frame of mind. Whatever their social 

 position, men and women are capable only of a certain 

 amount of happiness, and to imagine that marriage is the 

 sovereign cure for all disquietudes is to imagine that it 

 can change one's nature. Theocritus was quite right in 

 his doctrine, though the nymph is made to deal with it 

 sportively : grapes they must be grapes " dried into 

 raisins are still delicious." Virgil recommends raisins as 

 proper for the bees, when suffering from the casualties 

 which at times befall their useful little lives. It is in his 

 language that we find the origin of the name, which is a 

 curious derivation from the Latin racemus, "a bunch 

 of grapes," the meaning it held as late as the time of 



Chaucer : 



" For no man at the firste stroke, 



Ne may not fel adoune an oke ; 



