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Friends, I proudly come from a family of beer lovers, and have my eyes peeled not only for bicycle quotations in the books I read, but for those concerned with beer as well. I dipped into my very first de Maupassant the other day, and he satisfied.

He had his own fashion of uncorking the bottle and making the beer foam, gazing at it as he inclined his glass and then raised it to a position between the lamp and his eye that he might judge of its color. When he drank, his great beard, which matched the color of his favorite beverage, seemed to tremble with affection; his eyes positively squinted in the endeavor not to lose sight of the beloved glass, and he looked for all the world as if he were fulfilling the only function for which he was born. He seemed to have established in his mind an affinity between the two great passions of his life–pale ale and revolution–and assuredly he could not taste the one without dreaming of the other.

This evocation of trembling beer appreciation captivated me entirely. I am easily charmed.

It’s a great short story, too. Review to come.

Filed under: miscellaneous | Tagged: beer, classics, short stories |