their palates a drop.

Ah, those marvellous, unforgettable aromas that
come to me out of the long ago with all the reminders
they bring of clink of glass and touch of elbow, of
happy boys and girls and sweet old faces. it is forty
years since they greeted my nostrils in the cool, bare,
uncurtained hall of the old house in Kennedy Square,
but they are still fresh in my memory. Sometimes
it is the fragrance of newly made gingerbread, or the
scent of creamy custard with just a suspicion of
peach-kernels; sometimes it is the scent of fresh
strawberries--strawberries that meant the spring, not
the hot-house or Bermuda--and sometimes it is the
smell of roasted oysters or succulent canvas-backs!
Forty years ago--and yet even to-day the perfume of
a roasted apple never greets me but I stand once more
in the old-fashioned room listening to the sound of
Nathan's flute; I see again the stately, silver-haired,
high-bred mistress of the mansion with her kindly
greeting, as she moves among her guests; I catch the
figure of that old darkey with his brown, bald head
and the little tufts of gray wool fringing its sides, as
he shuffles along in his blue coat and baggy white
waistcoat and much-too-big gloves, and I hear the
very tones of his voice as he pushes his seductive tray
before me and whispers, confidentially:

"Take a li'l ob de apple, sah; dat's whar de real
'spression oh de toddy is."