The Wine-press, Hungary

The chief apartments of the house, occupying the centre of it, and being entered immediately from the front steps, was that devoted to the winepress. It was like a huge barn, the floor of trodden and beaten earth, and the door large and wide, to facilítate the entrance of immense baskets of grapes, and to give ingress to the only light which the place afforded. Here, when the eye grew accustomed to the gloom, I discovered dark forms moving to and fro. On two sides were large vessels, something like enormous barrels, or small wouden pulpits, and in each of these a man appeared to be dancing. Around him were others, who, from time to time, flung the grapes beneath the dancer's feet, or arranged mysterious taps and screws, which were to aid the flowing of the grape-juice into the great vats in the cellar below. I looked into the barrels, and saw that the dancers, or treaders, were stamping on the skins and sterns of the grapes, piled at least a foot in thiekness, and drained of their juice by the process, the fruit having been thrown in promiscuously as it was picked - only that, in one case, the grapes were white, and in the other purple. The overseer, a sturdy Wallachian, with a flerce black mustache and ringlets, looked narrowly at the little streams of juice that ran 'som the taps, and when, at last, those 'rom one Barrel dwindled, and then came drop by drop and stopped, the treader swung himself to the ground, and, with shovels and wooden vessels, Droceeded to empty it of the pressed jrape skins and stalks, and reflll it with fresh fruit. And here I must say my romantic delusions as to the "treading of the wine-press," and all the patriarchal institutions which surround it, vanished at once and forever. I had had dim ideas of snowy garments dyed purple with the juice of the grape, and the delicate feet of girls treading the luscious fruit under the shade of vine-clad ;rellises in the open air. In my imagination there were fountains of pure water washing away all stains and impurities, and long processions of men md maidens bearing the fruit on their tieads, all decked with flowers, and singing, and dancing to the sound of harps and flutes. Had I not seen pictures to that effect, read poetical descriptions of it, and had not I always beea encouraged by my childhood's instructors in this delusion? And now, behold, there were not any snowy garments at all; the Hungarians had on coarse shirts and loose drawers tucked up above the knee, and I came to the c jnclusion that they had never seen any Eountains of pure water, and wouldn't nave known the use of them if thehad. For there was a kind of griminess about them, burned in by the sun, which seemed to indícate that they never washed themselves or their clothes. [n fact, they had a fine contempt for ;he ordinar rules of cleanliness. One olackeyed, purple-legged fellow, with the grape juice just dry ing on his bare feet, siezed a basket, and ran off down the steps and into the vineyard, and presently returning with a load of the Eruit, shot it into the press, and, with all the dust and dirt of the road still clinging to his feet, mounted, and began to tread the grapes, and stood almost knee-deep in the liquor, which, tiaving served him as a sort of footbath, was to be the drink, perhaps, of future generations of reflned, fastidious palates. Having seen this I became tnelancholy, and preferred to leave the rest of the manipulations of earth's