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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: poured forth among the sea. It is not Pan only; Bacchus,
too, is dead.
If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun
of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or
three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly,
and storing reminiscences - for a bottle of good wine, like a
good act, shines ever in the retrospect - if wine is to
desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have
compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles squandered
upon dinner-parties, where the guests drank grossly,
discussing politics the while, and even the schoolboy "took
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