champagne that a wine drinker would care to swallow. Champagne of the
"large bottle" variety is drunk to a larger extent in the United
States than anywhere else; in fact one would not be far wrong in
saying that it is manufactured for the American market. Generally, the
best champagne is made for England and Russia. The people of those
countries who drink champagne have made at least a cursory study of it
and are able, at a moment's notice, to name the best vintages of the
last twenty-five or thirty years. There are Americans who can do this,
too, but they are not of the "large bottle" or "cold bottle" variety.
The latter are the people who account for the fact that much more
"champagne" is consumed than is furnished by the vineyards of France.

THOMAS B. FIELDERS.




=Drift of the Day=


From my station here on the housetop my gaze wanders out over acres of
roofs--the leaded coverings of hotels, apartment-houses, and office
buildings. They rear themselves beneath and around me as the lesser
peaks of the Himalayas seen from Mount Everest. My eyes ache with the
diversity of their shapes, the eccentricity of their styles, the
irregularity of their altitudes. No man viewing them can continue
blind to the independence of the American citizen, to the ostentation
of his right of personal selection, to his individual caprice. They
stand, a brick-and-iron commentary upon the competing ambitions of two
generations of townsmen.