For, except at those hours wherein they were most
temporately fed at their parents' table, she would not suffer them,
though parched with thirst, to drink even water; preventing an evil
custom, and adding this wholesome advice: "Ye drink water now, because
you have not wine in your power; but when you come to be married,
and be made mistresses of cellars and cupboards, you will scorn water,
but the custom of drinking will abide." By this method of instruction,
and the authority she had, she refrained the greediness of
childhood, and moulded their very thirst to such an excellent
moderation that what they should not, that they would not.
And yet (as Thy handmaid told me her son) there had crept upon her a
love of wine. For when (as the manner was) she, as though a sober
maiden, was bidden by her parents to draw wine out of the hogshed,
holding the vessel under the opening, before she poured the wine
into the flagon, she sipped a little with the tip of her lips; for
more her instinctive feelings refused. For this she did, not out of
any desire of drink, but out of the exuberance of youth, whereby it
boils over in mirthful freaks, which in youthful spirits are wont to
be kept under by the gravity of their elders.
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