T. T. Greg

“ No longer, charm he never so wisely with his choice selection of adjectives, those wondrously suggestive epithets of qualification and allurement, no longer dare we let his oily deliciousness gladden the palate of us upon whom Podagra has laid his dolorous finger. Henceforth life must be for us a stern fact, not to be laughed or quaffed away, but to be lived through and down and out. ”

“ Maybe these veteran topers, these fontes et origines mali, themselves grew old in years, and suffered their twinges, and swore their expostulatory swears; but they had drunk their fill; while we, a degenerate progeny, have no drink, and begin our twinges in our cradle, interrupting with our infantine oaths the lullaby of our nurses, and finding, as we grow older, our books in the pinching boots, sermons in chalkstones, and Gout in everything. ”

“ Redolent of all that is bright and cheerful in life, the scoff of our youth, the Cassandra of our prime, the scourge and the pest of our old age, he has laid his heavy hand upon our yet heavier boot. We are crucified with what Cicero called the dolours of the gout. ”

“ The long white fingers, tipped with the almond nails of perfect feature and complexion have grown, it seems to us, a trifle crooked, and there rises now and again an angry flush of ugly purple which irradiates them with an uncanny lurid glare from which we shrink, with a tiny shudder of inconsiderable horror, for we will not swell our own bogie man to unreasonable proportions. ”

“ What lovelier labour does gastronomy know than to let its hand roam under the dark green strawberry leaves in English garden, and lure from its hiding-place the queen of fruits, as the rose of flowers, whether we take it cool and refreshing from the chilly shade, or hot and life-giving with the warmth of sun and heaven thick upon it? ”

“ He will tolerate no sweet to make entrance into a system over which he exercises his tyrannous control, nor permit any acid, however refreshing, to keep harbour therein. What more poetical image in the world than to quaff the juice of the grape from Bordeaux vineyards and sun-bathed slopes of Epernay, and to dream we have clambered along the valleys and up the romantic ravines of snow-topped Helicon and tapped the fountains of Aganippe and Hippocrene, summoning the Muses themselves to play the Hebe for us? ”

“ Surely not on ourselves, for we own not to the gallons we have drunken of wines heady and strong, wines tawny and fruity and loaded, wines creamy and nutty and rich, wines rosily opulent and aridly pale. ”

“ The fiend is inexorable. Drink toast and water and he will leave us in peace, eat no fruit and taste no sugar, eschew butter and things which make for slipperiness, and he will go into temporary hiding ”