TEA
Cheap tea contains sawdust, dried and powdered hay, grass-seed, and departed but unlamented insects. Moral—buy good tea, or go without. Have the kettle boiling, and take the water at the first boil. Scald out the tea-pot, which must never be of metal, and put into it one teaspoonful of tea for each person, and one for the pot, or more, if curly hair for the drinker is desired. Pour one cupful of boiling water for each person and another for the pot upon the tea, and pour off the tea inside of three minutes. After that the boiling water busies itself in taking tannic acid out of the tea grounds. Tannic acid hardens albumen into a leathery substance of which the most courageous stomach is rightfully suspicious, and also puckers the mucous membrane of the stomach into smocking. Persistent drinking of boiled tea is quite likely to relieve the stomach altogether of its valued and hard-worked mucous membrane.