The Little Tea Book

by Unknown

We are pretty prosaic tea-drinkers in America. Is it because there is not enough "touch and go" about the drink, or that we are too busy to settle down to the quiet, comfort, and thoughtful tea-ways of our contemporaries? Wait until a few things are settled; when our kitchen queens do not leave us in the "gray of the morning," and all of our daughters have obtained diplomas in the art and science of gastronomy.

However made or taken, tea at best or worst is a glorious drink. As a stimulant for the tired traveller and weary worker it is unique in its restful, retiring, soothing, and caressing qualities.

THE TEA-TABLE

Tho' all unknown to Greek and Roman song,
The paler hyson and the dark souchong,
Tho' black nor green the warbled praises share
Of knightly troubadour or gay trouvère,
Yet deem not thou, an alien quite to numbers,
That friend to prattle and that foe to slumbers,
Which Kian-Long, imperial poet, praised
So high that, cent per cent, its price was raised;
Which Pope himself would sometimes condescend
To place commodious at a couplet's end;
Which the sweet Bard of Olney did not spurn,
Who loved the music of the "hissing urn."
. . .
For the dear comforts of domestic tea
Are sung too well to stand in need of me
By Cowper and the Bard of Rimini;
Besides, I hold it as a special grace
When such a theme is old and commonplace.
The cheering lustre of the new-stirr'd fire,
The mother's summons to the dozing sire,
The whispers audible that oft intrude
On the forced silence of the younger brood,
The seniors' converse, seldom over new,
Where quiet dwells and strange events are few,
The blooming daughter's ever-ready smile,
So full of meaning and so void of guile.
And all the little mighty things that cheer
The closing day from quiet year to year,
I leave to those whom benignant fate
Or merit destines to the wedded state.
. . .
'Tis woman still that makes or mars the man.
And so it is, the creature can beguile
The fairest faces of the readiest smile.
The third who comes the hyson to inhale,
If not a man, at least appears a male.
. . .
Last of the rout, and dogg'd with public cares,
The politician stumbles up the stairs;
Whose dusky soul nor beauty can illume,
Nor wine dispel his patriotic gloom.
In restless ire from guest to guest he goes,
And names us all among our country's foes;
Swears 'tis a shame that we should drink our tea,
'Till wrongs are righted and the nation free,
That priests and poets are a venal race,
Who preach for patronage and rhyme for place;
Declares that boys and girls should not be cooing.
When England's hope is bankruptcy and ruin;
That wiser 'twere the coming wrath to fly,
And that old women should make haste to die.

Condensed from a poem published in Fraser's Magazine,
January, 1857, and ascribed to Hartley Coleridge.

LADIES, LITERATURE, AND TEA

In spite of the fact that coffee is just as important a beverage as tea, tea has been sipped more in literature.

Tea is certainly as much of a social drink as coffee, and more of a domestic, for the reason that the teacup hours are the family hours. As these are the hours when the sexes are thrown together, and as most of the poetry and philosophy of tea-drinking teem with female virtues, vanities, and whimsicalities, the inference is that, without women, tea would be nothing, and without tea, women would be stale, flat, and uninteresting. With them it is a polite, purring, soft, gentle, kind, sympathetic, delicious beverage.

In support of this theory, notice what Pope, Gay, Crabbe, Cowper, Dryden, and others have written on the subject.

"The tea-cup times of hood and hoop,
And when the patch was worn"

--wrote Tennyson of the early half of the seventeenth century.

What a suggestive couplet, full of the foibles and follies of the times! A picture a la mode of the period when fair dames made their red cheeks cute with eccentric patches. Ornamented with high coiffures, powdered hair, robed in satin petticoats and square-cut bodices, they blossomed, according to the old engravings, into most fetching figures. Even the beaux of the day affected feminine frills in their many-colored, bell-skirted waistcoats, lace ruffles, patches, and powdered queues.