Afternoon tea, in small cities or in the country, in villages and academic towns, can well be made a most agreeable and ideal entertainment, for the official presentation of a daughter or for the means of seeing one's friends. In the busy winter season of a large city it should not be made the excuse for giving up the evening party, or the dinner, lunch, or ball. It is not all these, it is simply itself, and it should be a refuge for those women who are tired of balls, of over dressing, dancing, visiting, and shopping. It is also very dear to the young who find the convenient tea-table a good arena for flirtation. It is a form of entertainment which allows one to dispense with etiquette and to save time.
Five-o'clock teas should be true to their name, nor should any other refreshment be offered than tea, bread and butter, and little cakes. If other eatables are offered the tea becomes a reception.
There is a high tea which takes the place of dinner on Sunday evenings in cities, which is a very pretty entertainment; in small rural cities, in the country, they take the place of dinners. They were formerly very fashionable in Philadelphia. It gave an opportunity to offer hot rolls and butter, escalloped oysters, fried chicken, delicately sliced cold ham, waffles and hot cakes, preserves—alas! since the days of canning, who offers the delicious preserves of the past? The hostess sits behind her silver urn and pours the hot tea or coffee or chocolate, and presses the guest to take another waffle. It is a delightful meal, and has no prototype in any country but our own.
It is doubtful, however, whether the high tea will ever be popular in America, in large cities at least, where the custom of seven-o'clock dinners prevails. People find in them a violent change of living, which is always a challenge to indigestion. Some wit has said that he always liked to eat hot mince-pie just before he went to bed, for then he always knew what hurt him. If anyone wishes to know what hurts him, he can take high tea on Sunday evening, after having dined all the week at seven o'clock. A pain in his chest will tell him that the hot waffle, the cold tongue, the peach preserve, and that "last cup of tea" meant mischief.
Oliver Cromwell is said to have been an early tea-drinker; so is Queen Elizabeth,—elaborate old teapots are sold in London with the cipher of both; but the report lacks confirmation. We cannot imagine Oliver drinking anything but verjuice, nor the lion woman as sipping anything less strong than brown stout. Literature owes much to tea. From Cowper to Austin Dobson, the poets have had their fling at it. And what could the modern English novelist do without it? It has been in politics, as all remember who have seen Boston Harbor, and it goes into all the battles, and climbs Mt. Blanc and the Matterhorn. The French, who despised it, are beginning to make a good cup of tea, and Russia bathes in it. The Samovar cheers the long journeys across those dreary steppes, and forms again the most luxurious ornament of the palace. On all the high roads of Europe one can get a cup of tea, except in Spain. There it is next to impossible; the universal chocolate supersedes it. If one gets a cup of tea in Spain, there is no cream to put in it; and to many tea drinkers, tea is ruined without milk or cream.
In fact, the poor tea drinker is hard to please anywhere. There are to the critic only one or two houses of one's acquaintance where five o'clock tea is perfect.
THE INTELLECTUAL COMPONENTS OF DINNER.
"Lend me your ears."
"It has often perplexed me to imagine," writes Nathaniel Hawthorne, "how an Englishman will be able to reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the earthly institution of dinner is excluded. The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect, and softened itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary custom and ceremonies, that by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise among all its enjoyments would lack one daily felicity in greater measure than London in the season."
No dinner would be worth the giving that had not one witty man or one witty woman to lift the conversation out of the commonplace. As many more agreeable people as one pleases, but one leader is absolutely necessary.