268 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



WINE AND HORTICULTURE. 



" Look not thou upon the whie when it is red, when it giveth his color 

 in the cup, when it nioveth itself arighty 



Now, the Cincinnati Horticultural Society appointed a 

 committee to do just what Solomon says must not be done. 

 Their report is a very artful document, so drawn up that 

 the unwary would suppose that this was a mere business 

 affair — passing off quite respectably. But we were not to 

 be deceived ; we instantly saw through it ; and pencil in 

 hand, we noted all places in the report proper to shock a 

 true Washingtonian heart. 



Although the array of forty kinds of wine save one, did 

 not intimidate these hitherto respectable gentlemen, it 

 inspired them with prudence ; and a German Committee 

 called in, to ferret out any foreign wines which might have 

 been smuggled in to the confusion of the judges. 



The committee only darkly intimate their modus ope- 

 randi ; if they had given us a journal of their doings, 

 made out on the spot, by some trusty clei'k, what a bac- 

 chanal mystery would have been disclosed ! but they had 

 discretion enough left to defer this until they were sober 

 again. 



But Washingtonianism is abroad, and can detect all the 

 mysteries of ebriety, however graced with authority from a 

 Horticultural Society. "We can imagine the impatience 

 with which the bottles were preliminarily eyed — ^the entire 

 moderation with which each sipped a few first specimens ; 

 we can see them gradually warming with their subject — 

 tasting with alacrity — ^nodding at each other, squinting 

 through the ruddy glass, smacking their too often dewy 

 lips, or wagging their heads with more than ordinary satis- 

 faction as a beaker of great merit made the facilis descen- 

 sus averni. Laughter interrupts sober attention to busi- 

 ness ; in vain the chairman thumps the table for order ; 



