India houses on the wharves, and left to purge their vinous consciences
of such perilous stuff as was shaken up from their depths during the
long homeward voyage. Then, when a couple of months had gone by, it was
a custom for the merchant to summon a few old gentlemen to a solemn
tasting of the wines old and new. Of this, Mr. Wholesome told me one
day, and thought I had better remain to go through the cellars and drive
out the bungs and drop in the testers, and the like. "I will also stay
with thee," he added, "knowing perhaps better than thee the prices."

I learned afterward that Wholesome always stayed on these occasions, and
I had reason to be glad that I too was asked to stay, for, as it
chanced, it gave me a further insight into the character of my friend
the junior partner.

I recall well the long cellar running far back under Water street, with
its rows of great casks, of which Wholesome and I started the bungs
while awaiting the new-comers. Presently came slowly down the
cellar-steps our senior partner in nankeen shanks, silk stockings and
pumps--a frosty-visaged old man, with a nose which had fully earned the
right to be called bottle. Behind him limped our old porter in a blue
check apron. He went round the cellar, and at every second cask, having
lighted a candle, he held it upside down until the grease had fallen
thick on the cask, and then turning the candle stuck it fast in its
little pile of tallow, so that by and by the cellar was pretty well
lighted. Presently, in groups or singly, came old and middle-aged
gentlemen, and with the last our friend Schmidt, who wandered off to a
corner and sat on a barrel-head watching the effects of the mingling of
daylight and candlelight, and amused in his quiet way at the scene and
the intense interest of the chief actors in it, which, like other things
he did not comprehend, had for him the charm of oddness. I went over