ONLY A CUP OF TEA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2664, 5 April 1905, Page 65

ONLY A CUP OF TEA.

THE FASHIONABLE " MALADE IMAGINABLE."

Tea ? Thanks — ah ! — xo milk or sugar ; and would you mind giving me a cup not quite so strong. Sorry to be such a nuisanc?; it's all my doctor, don't you know. Dr Singleman won't hear of my drinking strong tea — says I'm ' all nerves — just a bundle of nerves.' 'And heart, doctor,' I always say. I should be positively phong, dion't you know, if it wasn't for this tiresome heart of mine." — The Health-Crank Woman. —

"Tea? My dear woman, surely you know I nevek drink it ! Shockin' habit ; just another form of dissipation, you know. Milk, please; — no, no, not milk and water! My dear soul, nothing more indigestible. Haven't you read of the appalling number of infants who die every year, starved to death on milk and water? Oh, quite true, I assure you! Hot milk, hot as you can drink it — that is the best piek-me-ug you can take : wonderful stimulant when you're overfatigued ! But, t.ea ! . . . Slow poison, I call it. No, no cake, thanks — never touch it : have you a plain biscuit, water or digestive? Ah, thanks so much ! I always say if everyone thought as little about what they ate and drank as I do, tue world would be a very easy place to live in !"'

-r-The Country Woman. —

"Oh, my dear girl, don't tell me I'm late for afternoon tea — I'm. dying for it ! What are you laughing at? Too early! Why, it's half after 3. I knew it must be, I felt such a vacuum. We always have it at 3, Early dinner, you know ; you feel ready for afternoon tea early^ to

match. Funny thing, habit is ! Always feel so horiidily empty and bored about 3 the first week or two I'm in town. Just want my tea, you know ; but wouldn't say so for worlds ! One would never hear the end of being such a country bumpkin. Milk? Rather ; and' sugar too — just th 9 old-fashioned formula, and back again presently for another cup ! Don't know how you find it, but driving always makes me thirsty."

— The Grandmother. —

"]S.o tea for me, thank you, Sophy: I gave it up some time ago. Just hot water, thank you. lam amazed at you young New Zealand women — the amount of tea you dirink is shocking ! Think of your digestion?, think of your complexions ! I call it positively wicked ! What do you expect to be at my ag-e?" —The Schoolgirl: At the Telephone.—

'"Who's speaking? Oh, is it you, Mary? Is Mr Jack at home? What? — not his time yet? He must take an awful time to come down the hill ! Tell him I want him to come to morning tea at Blank's on Saturday morning. Say Bob Sewell is coming, and Miss Olive and my sister and I — don't forget, now. Eleven o'clock, at Blank's, on Saturday morning — special cream cakes ! AH right. Thanks."

On a certain day in the year 1615 — to be precise, it was June 27 — a certain Englishman, Wickham by name, wrote a letter concerning the new beverage, t.°a, which letter is now preserved in the recordts of the East India Company. Maffei, the Portuguese writer, had referred to it previously by its Chinese name of "t'cha," which he spelt "chia" ; but the respectable Mr Wickham was the first Englishman to write of tea, or, as. he called' it, "chaw." Gradually, from this date, the new luxury became known to the great, or those wealthy citizens of London who could afford to pay at the rate sometimes of £10, and never less than £5, per pound ! This, however, is very ancient history, and we can but faintly picture to ourselves the amazement of the excellent Mr Wickham if he could beholdl the frivolous and copious fashion in which the modern woman, from smart society down to smart society's toiling charwoman, pours out libations of "t'cha " morning, noon, and night ! There was a day, however, not beyond the memory of <r the oldest inhabitant," when "making the tea" was a serious ceremony, conducted with dus sense of responsibility by the lady of the house. The tea itself, green and black, livedi in the refined seclusion of a quaint lacquered or rosewood) "tea-caddie," whose dainty compartments, metal lined and closelylidded, provided for the isolation of the precious green tea from the commoner black. A little silver scoop, with stumpy handle, completed the equipment, which was steeped, as it were, in a certain atmosphere" of decorous reserve and housewifely dignity. That was the period in which the pristine luxury of the first advent of tea-drinking had already become legendary — melted from pounds to shillings and pence ; drifted from the houses of the titled and wealthy to the hous.es of that undefinable clas&, "the well-to-do." It was indeedi no longer the privilege of the gentlefolk, that "dish of tea," over which Madame "talked Shakespeare and the musical glasses" to a little group of fine friends ; it was just "a cup of tea" in the houses of the merely genteel. It was still, however, for the most part China tea. Whimsical and weakstomached humanitarians did not hanker after the rash promise that their tea was "grown and picked by white people for white people." The "ugly nightmare of the "Yellow Peril" was not yet evolved, and honest John Bull was content to patronise and proTect his coloured brother, black, brown, or yellow, without foreshadowing the day when he might be "ruined by Chinese cheap labour." Hankow, on ihe Yangtsze, was a busy place in those past years when China did the tea trade of the' world, and 15 or 20 tea steamers loading for London alone would be in port at onoe. Now, the falling off in British trade there is as marked ac the diminution in the China tea trade itself. Manchuria is not the only portion of China which Russia has long been steadily and powerfully permeating, and in 1896 only one tea steamer loaded at Hankow for London, and in the same year two more British firms closed down and left. A still more significant index of waning British interest and occupation showed itself at the autumn races that year, when only one pony showed the colours of the last-left British racing stable. In both wholesale and retail shops prices are quoted and bills made out in Russian currency quite as often as in Chinese, and the Russian part of the community long since adopted the airs of teiritoriai overlords. Curiously enough, too, one reads that these same Russian residents, instead of locating themselves in their own "concession" or part' of the town, much prefer the laws and order of the British "concession," where they eagerly seize any chance of acquiring house property ana settling themselves as residents. If in these few sentences I seem to be giving more thought to Russians and their trade policy than to that perennially interesting "cup ofl tea" which is our topic, it is only because Russia, her policy, methods, and strange, silent achievements during the years when she was still the "bogie man" of international councils, cannot fail to render more interesting the history of even the homeliest cup of tea. To return, however, to Hankow and her tea trade. The high pressure c-f the season's markets lasts only six weeks, for though leal teas are ''fired" and shipped until September, and "brick" tea if made un.til January, it is from the first of May till the middle of June that the managers or heads of the great tea firms ar-e in re&idenpe and all the choice tea comes into an<f goes out of the market. The first quality of tea consists of the first, tender new leaves unfolding at Ihe tips, of the twigs in April, and is carefully picked by hand. (Conservative China will have none of the machinery so largely used in various sta^ej o{ tie tga-grgwhig industry in both

India and Ceylon.) The next crop of tougher leaves is cut with a knife ; and at the third and fourth gleanings the knife slashes into m hole twigs, tiny stems as will as leaves, as the "strangers" in our teacups too often bear witness. When Aie fir«t crop is ieady the samples, or "musters,'' ore submitted to the dealers ; and it must be quite an imposing and a sufficiently picturesque sight to see the long procession of Chinese brokers, in silken robes of ceremony, carried in their sedan chairs from the native city to offer their fiist "musters" of the season. From that moment, in all the rank heat and stew of suinmor, Hankow is wholly and entirely the city of tea, and runs at high pressure. The tea-taster, whose highly-trained and delicate seuses of taste and smell render his judgment unerring, is a personage of the first importance. Let us see how he takes his "cup of tea" during that six weeks <>{ his exclusive reign, in which the tea-taster is King of Hankow.

-A few leaves are carefully -weighed from the muster into a shallow cup and boiling water poured over the-n. The tea-taster notes carefully how the leaves unfold in the water ; how the liquor colours and deepens to a rich, clear coffee-broAvn ; and inhales the aroma of the essential oil as it is borne off in vapour before he takes his judicial sip. Carefully analysing its qualities for the second it jests on his tongue. the tea-taster ejects the liquid, never by any chance swallowing it. During the high tea season the tea-taster keeps a kind of Lent, mortifying the flesh for business purposes and to preserve every faculty of his specially-trained senses on the alert as rigidly "as any High Church devotee carries himself for his soul's welfare.

Despite all his precautions, hoAvever. and though lie never 'swallows a. single sip of his unnumbered tea samples,* at the end of 10 or 12 years the tea-taster's nerves and digestion are irreparably impaired, even th& stimulating effect of the" strong, volatile aroma in the tea "hongs" sometimes giving retired tea -tasters attacks of that "tea tremens" which the Chinese and Japanese recognise as a disease. One word more as to the tea-taster. Trade declines with one country, increases with another : the English tea trade in Hankow has passed into the hands of Russians and Siberians, — but- always the tea-ta*ter in an Englishman. There is a special kind of tea made at Pu'erh-cha, in Yunnan, which is known as "strengthening tea," of which I must tell you another day ; and there is much that is very interesting to be told about the brick tea, which finds its market in Russia and Siberia. What do you say? Shall we resume the subject some other day, and head it "A Second Cup of Tea'"?