Self-denial.

All the world should be told that touching story of the Otago Scot who presented an untouched bottle of prime old whisky to a Dunedin Museum. Never in all my experience of Scots, English, Jews and Scandy-hoovians have I heard of such an example of self-denying frugality. A Scotsman who could preserve a bottle of his national beverage uncorked for the period of nearly a lifetime must surely be a bird more rare than that rara avis I have just mentioned, the kotuku!

Discussing this strange, indeed unparalleled case with an acquaintance who is an authority on wet goods, we jointly wondered, in the first place, why such care to preserve what is usually regarded as intended to be consumed at the first opportunity? “Why,” asked my friend, “what was the matter with it?”

That, indeed, is the question Isaac and Moses as well as Sandy and Hector and the McTavish will ask. But dark doubts are apt to obtrude themselves. Is it whisky? Or is it cold tea or mildly coloured water? Is there a tragic shock in store for the first Otago burglar who raids that Museum in search of the so-well-advertised presentation bottle? We await further exciting news from Dunedin.