When the fruit is ripe, the fact is announced to the community 'by authority;' and until the proclamation appears, no man must gather his grapes if they should be dropping from the bushes. The signal, however, is at length given, and the work begins. 'The scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines, or bearing pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown cross-roads, along which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage-carts, groaning and cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs, heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint, broad-brimmed straw and felt hats; handkerchiefs twisted like turbans over straggling elf-locks; swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown; black flashing eyes; and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the precious fruit--all these southern peculiarities of costume and appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions and more saucy retorts--of what, in fact, in the humble and unpoetic, but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff"--is kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the but-end of a song, or the twanging close of a chorus, strikes the general fancy, and procures for the _morceau_ a lusty _encore_. Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes his watchful eye; no careless vintager shakes the precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent: he turns up the clusters, to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are persevering manfully in their long-continued dance.'