Tea contains several other ingredients besides the nerve-food just now described. It has in it something which gives it the very fragrant smell, and delicate agreeable flavor, tea drinkers learn to value so highly. This fragrant principle, however, does not exist in the fresh tea-leaf. It is produced by a new sorting and arranging of the ingredients held in the fresh leaf, during the process of drying and roasting. The more carefully the tea is dried, the more delicious its taste and scent become. But tea has also an astringent matter in it, something like the astringency of the mouth-drawing sloe-leaf;—this is not very easily dissolved from it by boiling water. It is only taken up from it after it has remained in hot water for a very long time. Tea contains too a large amount of a true flesh-making substance, of a nature very closely resembling that of the meal of beans or peas. This is not at all dissolved in boiling water. It has been related that when the Queen of England first received her present of the precious tea, the royal cook, not quite understanding what ought to be done with it, boiled it well, and then dished it up on the dinner table, in the same way as spinach and other vegetables. If it be true that the queen’s cook did treat the tea in this way, the plan was not altogether so absurd as it seems. Tea leaves, well cooked, and eaten after this fashion, would prove quite as wholesome and nutritious as beans and peas, the excess of the more active ingredients being removed by the boiling water, and the nourishing meal being principally left behind. Not more than a fourth part of this valuable production, tea, is really unnourishing wood and ash.
When a beverage is prepared from tea, if it be the object to get their finest qualities from the leaves, without regard to expense, the best method of proceeding is to use a large proportion of tea, pouring on as much boiling water at once as will make us the quantity required, and taking it off again after the tea has been standing about ten minutes. The water then dissolves principally the nerve food ingredient and fragrant flavors, and leaves behind the coarser meal and astringent parts. When, on the other hand, the object is to get all the nourishment out of the tea which it can be made to yield, about a quarter of a small teaspoonful of carbonate of soda should be put into the water with the leaves, and the whole should be allowed to stand, covered up closely in a warm place, for a longer time. By this management, the nutritious meal and other coarser ingredients are partially dissolved into the water, as well as the finer parts. The addition of sugar and milk to the beverage of course increases its directly nourishing powers.
Half an ounce of good tea contains about three grains of the active nerve-food ingredient. This therefore is quite as much as any individual should use for the preparation of beverage for a single day. It is also somewhat important how even this moderate quantity is employed. Much of the bad effect which has been attributed to tea, really has been due to the way in which the tea has been drunk, rather than to the direct influence of the leaf. People commonly swallow many cups of it in rapid succession, and pour it down their throats as hot as they can bear it. This is all very unreasonable and wrong. As a rule, never more than a couple of small cups of tea, made from about two drachms of the leaf, should be taken at one time, and even these should not be drunk until the beverage is so far cooled as to cease to give an impression of actual heat to the palate and stomach. The stomach itself makes things warm that are submitted to its influence; there can, therefore, be no harm in warmth. Warm things are not weakening to the stomach, as some people conceive. It is only hot things that are weakening, because they force and over-goad the activity of the organ, and then leave it weary and exhausted from the forced work it has been made to perform.
[To be concluded.]
The men most to be pitied are those who have no command over themselves, who can not do what they would, and who, even whilst they are performing virtuous deeds, do so from mean motives, from regard to happiness and mental satisfaction, fear of the reproaches of conscience, or else of future punishment. This is all very well and useful, supposing that the man can not be kept in the straight path by any other motives, but he who looks inwardly to the heart and soul can derive no satisfaction from such conduct. True nobility only exists when the good is sought for its own sake, either as a recognized law of pure duty, or from the feeling of the lofty dignity and constraining beauty of virtue. It is only these motives that show the disposition to be great and noble, and these alone react upon the character.—Wilhelm von Humboldt.
[C. L. S. C. WORK.]
By J. H. VINCENT, D. D., Superintendent of Instruction, C. L. S. C.