THROUGH A GLASS LIGHTLY
Death, on the pale horse Insurance, has bid me stand and deliver, and offers me life only on the degrading terms of abject teetotalism. All is over; no longer do I descend—oh! facilis et amabilis descensus—into the cellar and watch with silent joy the removal, for my own immediate delectation, of the “storied urn”; no longer does my “animated bust” glow with strange prospective and speculative yearnings. No more do I watch the solemn decantation which from a mere habit has risen into the dignity of a rite—a rite which has its acolytes as well as its high priest, who was none other than I. Vanished, alas! is that bittersweet anxiety of gaze lest the crust should be broken, the sediment too disturbed and thick. Not now am I fitted to pro-
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