A Trick

"In Cana lived a Palestinian merchant who gave wine to all comers. 'Wine for everyone,' he cried into the street. 'On the house.' He wore an open jacket and a blue shirt buttoned to the top. He brandished a silver tray full of tiny wineglasses. My friends would not enter his shop. They thought it was a trick, It was a trick:
Put a man through life for sixty years and he is generous to strangers.

I took a glass of red wine from the silver tray and drank it down." -Annie Dillard, For the Time Being