What no cheese.

"Something may be expected on the question-What, if anything, should be taken and eaten with after-dinner wine? I am afraid that the 'whets' of our ancestors were rather stimulants to drinking than meliorants of appreciation. Their chief modern representatives-olives and devilled biscuits-are not bad, but I have never, despite a due devotion to Pallas, been such an enthusiast for the olive as some of my friends. And the devilled biscuits, a capital thing in itself, is rather violent for a fine wine. Plain Passover bread, or those “Thin Captains', which somewhat resemble it, seem to me best of all. Nuts pass, of course, but most 'soft' fruit is questionable. Grapes go not ill, but I have sometimes felt a moral qualm, in marrying a grape too early to what is in a way its grandmother. Some accept peaches and nectarines; I rather doubt, though I am fond of the later. Strawberries have many votes, and some good stories, in their favour. But the one fruit which seems to me to go best with all wine, from hock to sherry from claret to port, is the medlar-an admirable and distinguished thing in and by itself, and a worthy mate for the best of liquors."