The problem is, in the space of one hour, more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly exalted life.

Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,--talk, alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now just where it was when The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed, -- when six great vessels containing water, the whole amounting to more than a hogshead-full, were changed into the best of wine.

I once wrote a song about wine, in which I spoke so warmly of it, that I was afraid some would think it was written inter pocula; whereas it was composed in the bosom of my family, under the most tranquillizing domestic influences.
-- The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous .-- Can you tell me,--he said,--who wrote a song for a temperance celebration once, of which the following is a verse?
Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair The joys of the banquet to chasten and share! Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine, And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine! I did,--I answered .-- What are you going to do about it ?--I will tell you another line I wrote long ago:-- Don't be "consistent,"-- but be simply true.
The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface.

It is hard work to resist this grinding-down action .-- Now give me a chance.

Better eternal and universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made wives and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they should have honored, as they came reeling home from their debauches! Yet better even excess than lying and hypocrisy; and if wine is upon all our tables, let us praise it for its color and fragrance and social tendency, so far as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the closet and pretend not to know the use of a wine-glass at a public dinner! I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent." But a great many things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply because they are partial views of a truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a front view of a face and its profile often do.
Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have great respect, for I owe him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he has often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend the "Autocrat,"-- which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by omitting the very word which gives it its significance,--the word fluid, intended to typify the mobility of the restricted will,--holds it up, I say, as if it attacked the reality of the self-determining principle, instead of illustrating its limitations by an image.