A Journalists Note-Book

Excerpt from A Journalist's Note-Book, 1895

Some years ago there was an auction of wine at a country-house in Scotland, the late owner of which had taken pains to gain a reputation for judgment in the matter of wine-selecting. He had all his life been nearly as intemperate as a temperance orator in his denunciation of whisky as a drink, hoping to inculcate a taste for vintage clarets upon the Scots; but he that tells the tale - it is not a new one - says that the man died without seriously jeopardizing the popularity of the native manufacture.