The Little Tea Book | Page 5

lower classes.
It is a singular fact, too, that at that period there was no other really vigorous defender of the beverage. All the best of the other writers did was to praise its pleasing qualities, associations, and social attributes.
Still, tea grew in popular favor, privately and publicly. The custom had now become so general that every wife looked upon the tea-pot, cups, and caddy to be as much her right by marriage as the wedding-ring itself. Fine ladies enjoyed the crowded public entertainments with tea below stairs and ventilators above. Citizens, fortunate enough to have leaden roofs to their houses, took their tea and their ease thereon. On Sundays, finding the country lanes leading to Kensington, Hampstead, Highgate, Islington, and Stepney, "to be much pleasanter than the paths of the gospel," the people flocked to those suburban resorts with their wives and children, to take tea under the trees. In one of Coleman's plays, a Spitalfield's dame defines the acme of elegance as:
"Drinking tea on summer afternoons At Bagnigge Wells with china and gilt spoons."
London was surrounded with tea-gardens, the most popular being Sadlier's Wells, Merlin's Cave, Cromwell Gardens, Jenny's Whim, Cuper Gardens, London Spa, and the White Conduit House, where they used to take in fifty pounds on a Sunday afternoon for sixpenny tea-tickets.
One D'Archenholz was surprised by the elegance, beauty, and luxury of these resorts, where, Steele said, they swallowed gallons of the juice of tea, while their own dock leaves were trodden under foot.
The ending of the East India Company's monopoly of the trade, coupled with the fact that the legislature recognized that tea had passed out of the catalogue of luxuries into that of necessities, began a new era for the queen of drinks destined to reign over all other beverages.
[Illustration of woman]

O TEA!
In the drama of the past Thou art featured in the cast; (O Tea!) And thou hast played thy part With never a change of heart, (O Tea!) For 'mid all the ding and dong Waits a welcome--soothing song, For fragrant Hyson and Oolong. . . . A song of peace, through all the years, Of fireside fancies, devoid of fears, Of mothers' talks and mothers' lays, Of grandmothers' comforts--quiet ways. Of gossip, perhaps--still and yet-- What of Johnson? Would we forget The pictured cup; those merry times, When round the board, with ready rhymes Waller, Dryden, and Addison--Young, Grave Pope to Gay, when Cowper sung? Sydney Smith, too; gentle Lamb brew, Tennyson, Dickens, Doctor Holmes knew. The cup that cheered, those sober souls, And tiny tea-trays, samovars, and bowls. . . . So here's a toast to the queen of plants, The queen of plants--Bohea! Good wife, ring for your maiden aunts, We'll all have cups of tea. --ARTHUR GRAY.

TEA TERMS
JAPANESE
Ori-mono-cha . . . Folded Tea Giy-?ku-ro-cha . . . Dew Drop Tea Usu-cha . . . Light Tea Koi-cha . . . Dark Tea T?-bi-dashi-cha . . . Sifted Tea Ban-cha . . . Common Tea Yu-Shiyutsu-cha . . . Export Tea Neri-cha . . . Brick Tea Koku-cha . . . Black Tea Ko-cha . . . Tea Dust Broken Leaves Riyoku-cha . . . Green Tea
CHINESE
Bohea . . . "Happy Establishment" So called after two ranges of hills, Fu-Kien or Fo-Kien Congou . . . Labor Named so at Amoy from the labor in preparing it. Sou chong . . . Small Kind Hyson . . . Flourishing Spring Pe-koe . . . White Hair So called because only the youngest leaves are gathered, which still have the delicate down--white hair--on the surface. Pou-chong . . . Folded Tea So called at Canton after the manner of picking it.
Brick Tea--prepared in Central China from the commonest sorts of tea, by soaking the tea refuse, such as broken leaves, twigs, and dust, in boiling water and then pressing them into moulds. Used in Siberia and Mongolia, where it also serves as a medium of exchange. The Mongols place the bricks, when testing the quality, on the head, and try to pull downward over the eyes. They reject the brick as worthless if it breaks or bends.
[Illustration of Japanese woman]

TEA LEAVES
BY JOHN ERNEST MCCANN
According to Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of "The History of Civilization in England," who was the master of eighteen languages, and had a library of 22,000 volumes, with an income of $75,000 a year, at the age of twenty-nine, in 1850 (he died in 1860, at the age of thirty-nine), tea making and drinking were, or are, what Wendell Phillips would call lost arts. He thought that, when it came to brewing tea, the Chinese philosophers were not living in his vicinity. He distinctly wrote that, until he showed her how, no woman of his acquaintance could make a decent cup of tea. He insisted upon a