VISIT TO A WINE-CELLAR. 253 



table land, which, and the woodlands in the vicinity, were to 

 be the field of our operations.. 



We were neither of us in a very talkative humour. The 

 weather did not inspire us with much confidence, and the 

 truth is, if it must be told, the worthy Herr and myself had 

 been indulging in rather too copious draughts of his favourite 

 Eauenthaler on the preceding evening, whilst talking over 

 sporting souvenirs, and anticipations of our sport on the 

 following day. He had asked me down into his keller, the 

 deeply hidden emporium of his vinous treasures, to try some 

 of the vintages of which he was so justly proud, and had 

 carried with him several of those emerald double wineglasses 

 which date their existence with the first growth of the grape 

 in the Khenish vineyards, a long glass tube, and a candle. 

 Having arrived at this temple of Bacchus, he extracted 

 several of the bungs from the casks, and, by carefully insinu- 

 ating the tube into their contents, extracted glass after 

 glass of the golden liquor. How long this state of things 

 may have continued I know not, had not a stop been put 

 upon our proceedings by Herr Gogel dropping the tube in a 

 cask, my breaking the wineglass I held, and stumbling over 

 the candle. I think it ended at last by both of us falling 

 asleep, and dozing very comfortably until a door opened 

 above our heads, and Frau Gogel awakened us from our 

 pleasant dreams by exclaiming, with stentorian lungs 



" Heinrich ! en Gottes namen, was de henker machen sie 

 so lang im keller." 



According to infantine phraseology, we caught it, and no 

 doubt deserved to do so ; and from the London Docks to 

 minor establishments of the same kind I have ever since 

 eschewed those vinous exhalations, which, arising either from 

 the fungi or the cobwebs, and partly no doubt from the con- 

 tents of the casks, are apt to have such a somniferous effect 

 upon the cerebral system. Thus we were not quite as merry 



