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Updated: May 16, 2025
"Then came the great war, and wars are always in one way demoralizing. West Point in the early sixties was utterly unlike the West Point of to-day, and no worse than a dozen of our greatest colleges. The corps still had its tales and traditions of the old time Fourth-of-July dinners at the mess hall, when everybody made a dash for the decanters and drank everything in sight.
Any doubt regarding the contents of the hospitable looking bottles was dispelled by such prominent inscriptions in gilt letters as "Whisky," "Brandy" and "Rum." To add to the effect, between the decanters were ranged glass jars of striped peppermint and winter-green candies, while a few lemons suggested pleasing possibilities of a hot sling, spiced rum flip or Tom and Jerry.
At Kishlak, for instance, we found a substantial brick building with a large guest-room, down the centre of which ran a long table with spotless table-cloth, spread out with plates of biscuits, apples, nuts, pears, dried fruits, and sweetmeats, beautifully decorated with gold and silver paper, and at intervals decanters of water rather cold fare with the thermometer at a few degrees above zero.
Then Lot threw open the fine carved doors of the cupboard, and the shelves were covered with precious blue china, brought from over seas, and wine-glasses like bubbles of crystal, and decanters as graceful as plumes. "Do you like it, Madelon?" Lot asked; and Madelon replied, as before, that it was pretty. Lot showed Madelon all the wealth of his house before they returned to the sitting-room.
Elegant tables and chairs, sofas of a magnificent description, splendid looking-glasses, and prints of the principal public characters of England, as well as views of sea and land engagements, set in handsome gilt frames, beautifully cut glass decanters, and glasses, glass chandeliers, and a number of other things, too numerous to mention, were all mixed together in the utmost confusion.
The decanters and wine-bottles on the move, and the beer and soda founts pouring out continual streams, with a whiz. Stage-drivers, etc., asked to drink with the aristocracy, and mine host treating and being treated. Rubicund faces; breaths odorous of brandy-and-water. Occasionally the pop of a champagne cork. Returned home, and took a lesson in French of Mons.
Beside me the carriages keep rolling by to the Bois de Boulogne. Unconsciously I have wandered into this fashionable avenue on my promenade, and halted, quite stupidly, in front of a booth stocked with gingerbread and decanters of liquorice-water, each topped by a lemon.
Behind their chairs a table was set out with decanters and glasses, a tobacco-jar and cigar-boxes: clearly he had interrupted a symposium of a friendly and social sort. The visitor's eyes went straight to the obvious master of the house, a big, heavily-built, massive-framed man of sixty or thereabouts, who sat in state on the right-hand side of the hearth.
The flames of the candles were more and more blurred with a haze of tobacco smoke, the room became intolerably hot, the level of the wine grew steadily lower in the decanters, and the boy's face took a strained, quivering look, his pallour increased, his dark, wide-opened eyes seemed preternaturally large.
I was rather taken aback at the King's Arms when they showed me to a private room, because I'd met Mr. Nowell before in the Commercial; however, there he was, sitting in front of a blazing fire, and with a couple of decanters of wine upon the table.
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