went on, I do not believe there was an official function at which Madeira did not figure. There I always find it—the wine of ceremony, the sacrificial wine, without which no compact could be sealed, no event solemnized, no pleasure enjoyed. It seems to punctuate every step in the career of Philadelphians and of Philadelphia, and I thought nothing could be more characteristic, when I read the Autobiography of Franklin, than that it should have been over the Philadelphia Madeira one Governor of Pennsylvania planned a future for him, and another Governor of Pennsylvania later on discoursed provincial affairs with him, "most profuse of his solicitations and promises" under its pleasant influence. Throughout the old annals I am conscious of that decanter of Madeira always at hand, the Philadelphian "as free of it as an Apple Tree of its Fruit on a Windy Day in the month of July," one old visitor to the town records with a pretty fancy for which, as like as not, it was responsible.
And throughout the more modern records, there it is again. Even in the old-fashioned Philadelphia boarding-house less than a century ago, the men after dinner sat over their Madeira. New generations of visitors, like the old, drank it and approved, the Madeira that supported John Adams at Philadelphia's sinful feasts helping to steer Thackeray and an endless succession of strangers at the gate through Philadelphia's course of suppers and dinners. It amuses me to recall, as an instance of all it represented to Philadelpliia, that for a
