{"id":"01KG8AK8NC1EYK7T8M9DXQKDZ9","cid":"bafkreiaiys26llhvlqxj6tojlgygbd5zfxl35kcurgo37vkzwyhyxfsn2i","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7202,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.725Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":7124,"text":"CHAPTER XXIX\r\n\r\nTHE BOON COMPANIONS.\r\n\r\n\r\nThe wine, port, being called for, and the two seated at the little\r\ntable, a natural pause of convivial expectancy ensued; the stranger's\r\neye turned towards the bar near by, watching the red-cheeked,\r\nwhite-aproned man there, blithely dusting the bottle, and invitingly\r\narranging the salver and glasses; when, with a sudden impulse turning\r\nround his head towards his companion, he said, \"Ours is friendship at\r\nfirst sight, ain't it?\"\r\n\r\n\"It is,\" was the placidly pleased reply: \"and the same may be said of\r\nfriendship at first sight as of love at first sight: it is the only true\r\none, the only noble one. It bespeaks confidence. Who would go sounding\r\nhis way into love or friendship, like a strange ship by night, into an\r\nenemy's harbor?\"\r\n\r\n\"Right. Boldly in before the wind. Agreeable, how we always agree.\r\nBy-the-way, though but a formality, friends should know each other's\r\nnames. What is yours, pray?\"\r\n\r\n\"Francis Goodman. But those who love me, call me Frank. And yours?\"\r\n\r\n\"Charles Arnold Noble. But do you call me Charlie.\"\r\n\r\n\"I will, Charlie; nothing like preserving in manhood the fraternal\r\nfamiliarities of youth. It proves the heart a rosy boy to the last.\"\r\n\r\n\"My sentiments again. Ah!\"\r\n\r\nIt was a smiling waiter, with the smiling bottle, the cork drawn; a\r\ncommon quart bottle, but for the occasion fitted at bottom into a little\r\nbark basket, braided with porcupine quills, gayly tinted in the Indian\r\nfashion. This being set before the entertainer, he regarded it with\r\naffectionate interest, but seemed not to understand, or else to pretend\r\nnot to, a handsome red label pasted on the bottle, bearing the capital\r\nletters, P. W.\r\n\r\n\"P. W.,\" said he at last, perplexedly eying the pleasing poser, \"now\r\nwhat does P. W. mean?\"\r\n\r\n\"Shouldn't wonder,\" said the cosmopolitan gravely, \"if it stood for port\r\nwine. You called for port wine, didn't you?\"\r\n\r\n\"Why so it is, so it is!\"\r\n\r\n\"I find some little mysteries not very hard to clear up,\" said the\r\nother, quietly crossing his legs.\r\n\r\nThis commonplace seemed to escape the stranger's hearing, for, full of\r\nhis bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat sallow hands over it, and with a\r\nstrange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: \"Good wine, good\r\nwine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?\" Then brimming both\r\nglasses, pushed one over, saying, with what seemed intended for an air\r\nof fine disdain: \"Ill betide those gloomy skeptics who maintain that\r\nnow-a-days pure wine is unpurchasable; that almost every variety on sale\r\nis less the vintage of vineyards than laboratories; that most\r\nbar-keepers are but a set of male Brinvilliarses, with complaisant arts\r\npracticing against the lives of their best friends, their customers.\"\r\n\r\nA shade passed over the cosmopolitan. After a few minutes' down-cast\r\nmusing, he lifted his eyes and said: \"I have long thought, my dear\r\nCharlie, that the spirit in which wine is regarded by too many in these\r\ndays is one of the most painful examples of want of confidence. Look at\r\nthese glasses. He who could mistrust poison in this wine would mistrust\r\nconsumption in Hebe's cheek. While, as for suspicions against the\r\ndealers in wine and sellers of it, those who cherish such suspicions can\r\nhave but limited trust in the human heart. Each human heart they must\r\nthink to be much like each bottle of port, not such port as this, but\r\nsuch port as they hold to. Strange traducers, who see good faith in\r\nnothing, however sacred. Not medicines, not the wine in sacraments, has\r\nescaped them. The doctor with his phial, and the priest with his\r\nchalice, they deem equally the unconscious dispensers of bogus cordials\r\nto the dying.\"\r\n\r\n\"Dreadful!\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJMVDVBGMNVX6KTEX6BBC","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK8NCJMMS14ZG882HTQP4","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:58.636Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:12.229Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}