as you kiss, so exacting are the joys of the mouth,—talking, for example. The quiet eye may be allowed to participate, and sometimes the ear, where the music is played upon a violin, and that a Stradivarius. A well-kept lawn, with six-hundred-years-old cedars and a twenty-feet yew hedge, will add distinction to the meal. Nor should one ever eat without a seventeenth-century poet in an old yellow-leaved edition upon the table, not to be read, of course, any more than the flowers are to be eaten, but just to make music of association very softly to our thoughts. 

 Some diners have wine too upon the table, and in the pauses of thinking what a divine mystery dinner is, they eat. 

 For dinner IS a mystery,—a mystery of which even the greatest chef knows but little, as a poet knows not, 

   "with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped." 

 

 "Even our digestion is governed by angels," said Blake; and if you will resist the trivial inclination to substitute "bad angels," is there really any greater mystery than the process by which beef is turned into brains, and beer into beauty? Every beautiful woman we see has been made out of beefsteaks. It is a solemn thought,—and the finest poem that was ever written came out of a grey pulpy mass such as we make brain sauce of. 

 And with these grave thoughts for grace let us sit down to dinner. 

 Dinner! 

 

 

 CHAPTER VIII 

 STILL PRANDIAL 

 What wine shall we have? I confess I am no judge of wines, except when they are bad. To-night I feel inclined to allow my choice to be directed by sentiment; and as we are on so pretty a pilgrimage, would it not be appropriate to drink Liebfraumilch? 

 Hock is full of fancy, and all wines are by their very nature full of reminiscence, the golden tears and red blood of summers that are gone. 

 Forgive me, therefore, if I grow reminiscent. Indeed, I fear that the hour 

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