No more had been cleared than was necessary for cultivation; close
around each oasis ran the tangled wood; the glen enfolds them;
there they lie basking in sun and silence, concealed from all but
the clouds and the mountain birds.

Mr. M'Eckron's is a bachelor establishment; a little bit of a
wooden house, a small cellar hard by in the hillside, and a patch
of vines planted and tended single-handed by himself. He had but
recently began; his vines were young, his business young also; but
I thought he had the look of the man who succeeds. He hailed from
Greenock: he remembered his father putting him inside Mons Meg,
and that touched me home; and we exchanged a word or two of Scotch,
which pleased me more than you would fancy.

Mr. Schram's, on the other hand, is the oldest vineyard in the
valley, eighteen years old, I think; yet he began a penniless
barber, and even after he had broken ground up here with his black
malvoisies, continued for long to tramp the valley with his razor.
Now, his place is the picture of prosperity: stuffed birds in the
verandah, cellars far dug into the hillside, and resting on pillars
like a bandit's cave:- all trimness, varnish, flowers, and
sunshine, among the tangled wildwood. Stout, smiling Mrs. Schram,
who has been to Europe and apparently all about the States for
pleasure, entertained Fanny in the verandah, while I was tasting
wines in the cellar. To Mr. Schram this was a solemn office; his
serious gusto warmed my heart; prosperity had not yet wholly
banished a certain neophite and girlish trepidation, and he
followed every sip and read my face with proud anxiety. I tasted
all. I tasted every variety and shade of Schramberger, red and
white Schramberger, Burgundy Schramberger, Schramberger Hock,