"It fell to my lot to lead a brigade through a distant country for more than 600 miles. I fed the men as well as I could, but no one, officer or private, had anything stronger than tea to drink during the expedition. The men had peculiarly hard work to do, and they did it well, and without a murmur. We seem to have left crime and sickness behind us with the 'grog,' for the conduct of all was most exemplary and no one was ever ill. "
Mr. Winter Blyth, Medical Officer of Health for Marylebone, (London), says in reference to long cycling excursions, and experiments with beer and spirits,—"My own experience as to the best drink when on the road is most decidedly in favor of Tea. Tea appears to rouse both the nervous and muscular systems, with, so far as I can discover, no after-depressing effects."
"Edward Payson Weston, the great Pedestrian, finds in Tea and rest the most effective restoratives. He once walked 5000 miles in 100 days, and after each day's work, lectured on 'Tea versus Beer.'"
C. J. Nichod, late Secretary of the London Athletic Club, writes in his book—"Guide to Athletic Training," that "Tea is preferable for training purposes, possessing less heating properties and being more digestible than beer or spirits."
Cowper's lines, however hackneyed in quotation, are still classic in their application to English homes and their evening accompaniment, Tea.
"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in."
"Tea" was the designation of the customary evening meal in most American families for about two centuries, and as late as 1850, since which time it has merged in the more substantial "late dinner," in cities and towns especially, although the last meal of the closing day is still "Tea" in spirit and in name in many families where commercial necessities have not compelled change. The same is true of England from which we derive our customs, and with which we also changed it. According to Washington Irving's veracious History of New York, tea-parties were indulged in by the Dutch inhabitants of New Amsterdam during the reign of Governor Wouter Van Twiller (which commenced in 1633). Irving says:
"But though our worthy ancestors were singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bonds of intimacy by occasional banqueting, called tea parties.
"These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes or noblesse, that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at 3 o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. . . . The tea was served out of a majestic Delft tea-pot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherdesses tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this tea-pot from a huge copper tea-kettle. . . .
To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table by a string from the ceiling, so that it should be swung from mouth to mouth—an ingenious expedient which is still kept up by some families in Albany, but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.