What service do you do to any one in pouring your
best claret down his throat, when he knows no difference between
that and a much more humble vintage, your best claret which you
feel so sure you cannot replace? Why import canvas-back ducks for
appetites which would be quite as well satisfied with those out of
the next farm-yard? Your soup, which has been a care since
yesterday, your fish, got down with so great trouble from Bond
Street on that very day, your saddle of mutton, in selecting which
you have affronted every butcher in the neighbourhood, are all
plainly thrown away! And yet the hospitable hero who would fain
treat his friends as he would be treated himself can hardly arrange
his dinners according to the palates of his different guests; nor
will he like, when strangers sit at his board, to put nothing
better on his table than that cheaper wine with which needful
economy induces him to solace himself when alone. I,--I who write
this,--have myself seen an honoured guest deluge with the pump my,
ah! so hardly earned, most scarce and most peculiar vintage! There
is a pang in such usage which some will not understand, but which
cut Mr. Mainwaring to the very soul. There was not one among them
there who appreciated the fact that the claret on his dinner table
was almost the best that its year had produced.
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