Around the tea-table

Front matter

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J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.}

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Preface

\ T breakfast we have no time to spare, for -*- -^ the duties of the day are clamoring for attention ; at the noon-day dining-hour some of the family are absent ; but at six o'clock in the evening we all come to the tea-table for chit-chat and the recital of adventures. We take our friends in with us — the more friends, the merrier. You may imagine that the following chapters are things said or conversations indulged in, or papers read, or paragraphs made up from that interview. We now open the doors very wide and invite all to come in and be seated around the Tea-Table.

T. D. W. T.

Brooklyn, N. Y., Sept. i, 1874.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. — The Table-Cloth is Spread n

II. — Mr. Givemfits and Dr. Butterfield 19

Chapter I. The Table-cloth Ls Spread

OUR theory has always been, " Eat lightly in the evening." While, therefore, morning and noon there is bountifulness, we do not have much on our tea-table but dishes and talk. The most of the world's work ought to be finished by six o'clock p.m. The children are home from school. The wife is done mending or shopping. The merchant has got through with dry-goods or hardware. Let the ring of the tea-bell be sharp and musical. Walk into the room fragrant with Oolong or Young Hyson. Seat yourself at the tea-table wide enough apart to have room to take out your pocket-handkerchief if you want to cry at any pitiful story of the day, or to spread yourself in laughter if some one propound an irresistible

conundrum.

The bottle rules the sensual world, but the teacup is queen in all the fair dominions. Once this leaf was very rare, and fifty dollars a pound ; and when the East India Company made a present to the king of two pounds and two ounces, it was considered worth a mark in history. But now Uncle Sam and his wife ever)' year pour thirty million pounds of it into their saucers. Twelve hundred years ago, a Chinese scholar by the name of Lo Yu wrote of tea, " It tempers the spirits and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens and refreshes the bodv and clears the perceptive faculties." Our own observation is that there is nothing that so loosens the hinge of the tongue, soothes the temper, exhilarates the diaphragm, kindles sociality and makes the future promising. Like one of the small glasses in the wall of Barnum's old museum, through which vou could see cities and mountains bathed in sunshine, so, as you drink from the teacup, and get on toward the bottom so that it is sufficiently elevated, vou can see almost anything glorious that you want to. We had a great-aunt who used to come from town with the pockets of her bombazine dress standing way out with nice things for the children, but she would come in looking black as a thunder-cloud until she had got

THE TABLECLOTH IS SPREAD. 1 3

through with her first cup of tea, when she would empty her right pocket of sugar-plums, and having finished her second cup would empty the other pocket, and after she had taken an extra third cup, because she felt so very chilly, it took all the sitting-room and parlor and kitchen to contain her exhilaration.

Be not surprised if, after your friends are seated at the table, the style of the conversation depends very much on the kind of tea that the housewife pours for the guests. If it be genuine Young Hyson, the leaves of which are gathered early in the season, the talk will be fresh, and spirited, and sunshiny. If it be what the Chinese call Pearl tea, but our merchants have named Gunpowder, the conversation will be explosive, and somebody's reputation will be killed before you get through. If it be green tea, prepared by large infusion of Prussian blue and gypsum, or black tea mixed with pulverized black lead, you may expect there will be a poisonous effect in the conversation and the moral health damaged. The English Parliament found that there had come into that country two million pounds of what the merchants call " lie tea," and, as far as I can estimate, about the same amount has been imported into the United States ; and when the housewife pours into the cups of her guests a decoction of this "lie tea"

the group are sure to fall to talking about their neighbors, and misrepresenting everything they touch. One meeting of a "sewing society" up in Canada where this tea was served resulted in two law-suits for slander, four black eyes that were not originally of that color, the expulsion of the minister, and the abrupt removal from the top of the sexton's head of all capillary adornment.

But on our tea-table we will have first-rate Ningyong, or Pouchong, or Souchong, or Oolong, so that the conversation may be pure and healthy.

We propose from time to time to report some of the talk of our visitors at the tea-table. We do not entertain at tea many very great men. The fact is that great men at the tea-table for the most part are a bore. They are apt to be self-absorbed, or so profound I cannot understand them, or analytical of food, or nervous from having studied themselves half to death, or exhume a piece of brown bread from their coat-tail because they are dyspeptic, or make such solemn remarks about hydro-benzamide or sulphindigotic acid that the children get frightened and burst out crying, thinking something dreadful is going to happen. Learned Johnson, splashing his pompous wit over the table for Boswell to pick up, must have been a sublime nuisance. It was said of Goldsmith that "he wrote like an angel and talked like poor

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Poll." There is more interest in the dining-room when we have ordinary people than when we have extraordinary.

There are men and women who occasionally meet at our tea-table whose portraits are worth taking. There are Dr. Butterfield, Mr. Givemfits, Dr. Heavyasbricks, Miss Smiley and Miss Stinger, who come to see us. We expect to invite them all to tea very soon ; and as you will in future hear of their talk, it is better that I tell you now some of their characteristics.

Dr. Butterfield is one of our most welcome visitors at the tea-table. As his name indicates, he is both melting and beautiful. He always takes pleasant views of things. He likes his tea sweet; and after his cup is passed to him, he frequently hands it back, and says, " This is really delightful, but a little more sugar, if you please." He has a mellowing effect upon the whole company. After hearing him talk a little while, I find tears standing in my eyes without any sufficient reason. It is almost as good as a sermon to see him wipe his mouth with a napkin. I would not want him all alone to tea, because it would be making a meal of sweetmeats. But when he is present with others of different temperament, he is entertaining. He always reminds me of the dessert called floating island, beaten egg on custard. On all subjects — political, social and religious — he takes the smooth side. He is a minister, and preached a course of fifty-one sermons on heaven in one year, saying that he would preach on the last and fifty- second Sunday concerning a place of quite opposite character ; but the audience assembling on that day in August, he rose, and said that it was too hot to preach, and so dismissed them immediately with a benediction. At the tea-table I never could persuade him to take any currant-jelly, for he always preferred strawberry jam. He rejects acidity.

We generally place opposite him at the tea-table Mr. Givemfits. He is the very antipodes of Dr. Butterfield ; and when the two talk, you get both sides of a subject. I have to laugh to hear them talk ; and my little girl, at the controversial collisions, gets into such hysterics that we have to send her with her mouth full into the next room, to be pounded on the back to stop her from choking. My friend Givemfits is " down on " almost everything but tea, and I think one reason of his nervous, sharp, petulant way is that he takes too much of this beverage. He thinks the world is very soon coming to an end, and says, " The sooner the better, confound it !" He is a literary man, a newspaper writer, a book critic, and so on ; but if he were a minister, he would preach a course of fifty-one sermons on " future punishment," pro-

THE TABLE-CLOTH IS SPUE AD. \J

posing to preach the fifty-second and last Sabbath on " future rewards ;" but the last Sabbath coming- in December, he would say to his audience, " Really, it is too cold to preach. We will close with the doxology and omit the benediction, as I must go down by the stove to warm."

He does not like women — thinks they are of no use in the world, save to set the tea a-drawing. Says there was no trouble in Paradise till a female came there, and that ever since Adam lost the rib woman has been to man a bad pain in the side. He thinks that Dr. Butterfield, who sits opposite him at the tea-table, is something of a hypocrite, and asks him all sorts of puzzling questions. The fact is it is vinegar-cruet against sugar-bowl in perpetual controversy. I do not blame Givemfits as much as many do. His digestion is poor. The chills and fever enlarged his spleen. He has frequent attacks of neuralgia. Once a week he has the sick headache. His liver is out of order. He has twinges of rheumatism. Nothing he ever takes agrees with him but tea, and that doesn't. He has had a good deal of trial, and the thunder of trouble has soured the milk of human kindness. When he gets criticising Dr. Butterfield's sermons and books, I have sometimes to pretend that I hear somebody at the front door, so that I can go out in the hall and have an uproarious laugh without being indecorous. It is one of the great amusements of my life to have on opposite sides of my tea-table Dr. Butterfield and Mr. Givemfits.

But we have many others who come to our tea-table : Miss Smiley, who often runs in about six o'clock. All sweetness is Miss Smiley. She seems to like everybody, and everybody seems to like her. Also Miss Stinger, sharp as a hornet, prides herself on saying things that cut ; dislikes men ; cannot bear the sight of a pair of boots ; loathes a shaving apparatus; thinks Eve would have shown better capacity for house-keeping if she had, the first time she used her broom, swept Adam out of Paradise. Besides these ladies, many good, bright, useful and sensible people of all kinds. In a few days we shall invite a group of them to tea, and you shall hear some of their discussions of men and books and things. We shall order a canister of the best Young Hyson, pull out the extensiontable, hang on the kettle, stir the blaze, and with chamois and silver-powder scour up the tea-set that we never use save when we have company.

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Chapter II

MR. GIVEMFITS AND DR. BUTTER FIELD.

THE tea-kettle never sang a sweeter song than on the evening I speak of. It evidently knew that company was coming. At the appointed time our two friends, Dr. Butterfield and Mr. Givemfits, arrived. As already intimated, they were opposite in temperament — the former mild, mellow, fat, good-natured and of fine digestion, always seeing the bright side of anything; the other, splenetic, harsh, and when he swallowed anything was not sure whether he would be the death of it, or it would be the death of him.

No sooner had they taken their places opposite each other at the table than conversation opened. As my wife was handing the tea over to Mr. Givemfits the latter broke out in a tirade against the weather. He said that this winter was the most unbearable that had ever been known in the almanacs. When it did not rain, it snowed ; and when it was not mud, it was sleet. At this point he turned around and coughed violently, and said that in such atmosphere it was impossible to keep

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20 AROCXD THE TEA-TABLE.

clear of colds. He thought he would £0 South. He would rather not live at all than live in such a climate as this. Xo chance here, save for doctors and undertakers, and even they have to take their own medicines and lie in their own coffins.

At this Dr. Butterfield gave a good-natured laugh, and said, " I admit the inconveniences of the weather ; but are you not aware that there has been a drought for three years in the country, and great suffering in the land for lack of rain ? We need all this wet weather to make an equilibrium. What is discomfort to you is the wealth of the land. Besides that, I find that if I cannot get sunshine in the open air I can earn' it in the crown of my hat. He who has a warm coat, and a full stove, and a comfortable house, ought not to spend much of his time in complaint."

Miss Smiley slid this moment into the conversation with a heart}" "Ha! ha!" She said, "This last winter has been the happiest of my life. I never hear the winds gallop but I want to join them. The snow is onlv the winter in blossom. Instead of here and there on the pond, the whole country is covered with white lilies. I have seen gracefulness enough in the curve of a snowdrift to keep me in admiration for a week. Do you remember that morning after the storm of sleet, when every tree stood in mail of ice, with drawn

MR. GIVEMFITS AND DR. BUTTER FIELD. 21

sword of icicle ? Besides, I think the winter drives us in, and drives us together. We have never had such a time at our house with checker-boards, and dominoes, and blind-man's-buff, and the piano, as this winter. Father and mother said it seemed to them like getting married over again. Besides that, on nights when the storm was so great that the door-bell went to bed and slept soundly, Charles Dickens stepped in from Gad's Hill ; and Henry W. Longfellow, without knocking, entered the sitting-room, his hair white as if he had walked through the snow with his hat off; and William H. Prescott, with his eyesight restored, happened in from Mexico, a cactus in his buttonhole ; and Audubon set a cage of birds on the table — Baltimore oriole, chaffinch, starling and bobolink doing their prettiest; and Christopher North thumped his gun down on the hallfloor, and hung his 'sporting jacket' on the hat-rack, and shook the carpet brown with Highland heather. As Walter Scott came in his dog scampered in after him, and put

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both paws up on the marble-top table ; and Minnie asked the old man why he did not part his hair better, instead of letting it hang all over his forehead, and he apologized for it by the fact that he had been on a long tramp from Melrose Abbey to Kenilworth Castle. But I think as thrilling an evening as we had this winter was with a man who walked in with a prison-jacket, his shoes mouldy, and his cheek pallid for the want of the sunlight. He was so tired that he went immediately to sleep. He would not take the sofa, saying he was not used to that, but he stretched himself on the floor and put his head on an ottoman. At first he snored dreadfully, and it was evident he had a horrid dream ; but after a while he got easier, and a smile came over his face, and he woke himself singing and shouting. I said, ' What is the matter with you, and what were you dreaming about?' 'Well,' he said, 'the bad dream I had was about the City of Destruction, and the happy dream was about the Celestial City ;' and we all knew him right away, and shouted, ' Glorious old John Bunvan ! How is Christiana ?' So, you see," said Miss Smiley, "on stormy nights we really have a pleasanter time than when the moon and stars are reiomincr "

Miss Stinger had sat quietly looking into her tea-cup until this moment, when she clashed her spoon into the saucer, and said, "If there is anything I dislike, it is an attempt at poetry when you can't do it. I know some people who always try to show themselves in public : but when they are home, they never have their collar on straight, and in the morning look like a whirlwind breakfasting on a haystack. As for me, I am practical, and

M A'. GIVEMFITS AND DR. BUTTERFIELD. 2$

winter is winter, and sleet is sleet, and ice is ice, and a tea-cup is a tea-cup ; and if you will pass mine up to the hostess to be resupplied, I will like it a ereat deal better than all this sentimentalism. No sweetening, if you please. I do not like things sweet. Do not put in any of your beautiful snow for su^ar, nor stir it with an icicle."

This sudden jerk in the conversation snapped it off, and for a moment there was quiet. I knew not how to get conversation started again. Our usual way is to talk about the weather; but that subject had been already exhausted.

Suddenly I saw the color for the first time in years come into the face of Mr. Givemfits. The fact was that, in biting a hard crust of bread, he had struck a sore tooth which had been troubling him, and he broke out with the exclamation, " Dr. Butterfield, the physical and moral world is degenerating. Things get worse and worse. Look, for instance, at the tone of many of the newspapers ; gossip, abuse, lies, blackmail, make up the chief part of them, and useful intelligence is the exception. The public have more interest in murders and steamboat explosions than in the items of mental and spiritual progress. Church and State are covered up with newspaper mud."

" Stop !" said Dr. Butterfield. " Don't you ever buy newspapers ?'"

Chapter III. A Growler Soothed

GIVEMFITS said to Dr. Butterfield, "You asked me last evening if I ever bought newspapers. I reply, Yes, and write for them too. " But I see their degeneracy. Once you could believe nearly all they said ; now he is a fool who believes a tenth part of it. There is the New York Scandalmonger and the Philadelphia Prestidigitateur, and the Boston Prolific, which do nothing but hoodwink and confound the public mind. Ten dollars will get a favorable report of a meeting, or as much will get it caricatured. There is a secret spring behind almost every column. It depends on what the editor had for supper the night before whether he wants Foster hung or his sentence commuted. If the literary man had toast and tea, as weak as this before me, he sleeps soundly, and next day says in his columns that Foster ought not to be executed ; he is a good fellow, and the clergymen who went to Albany to get him pardoned were engaged in a holy calling, and their congregations had better hold fast of them lest they go up like Elijah. But if the editor

A GROWLER SOOTHED. 25

had a supper at eleven o'clock at night of scallops fried in poor lard, and a little too much bourbon, the next day he is headachy and says Foster, the scalawag, ought to be hung, or beaten to death with his own car-hook, and the ministers who went to Albany to get him pardoned might better have been taking tea with some of the old ladies. I have been behind the scenes and know all about it, and must admit that I have done some of the bad work myself. I have on my writing-stand thirty or forty books to discuss as a critic, and the column must be made up. Do you think I take time to read the thirty or forty books ? No. I first take a dive into the index, a second dive into the preface, a third dive into the four hundredth page, the fourth dive into the seventieth page, and then seize my pen and do up the whole job in fifteen minutes. I make up my mind to like the book or not to like it, according as I admire or despise the author. But the leniency or severity of my article depends on whether the room is cold and my rheumatism that day is sharp or easy. Speaking of these things reminds me that the sermon which the Right Reverend Bishop Goodenough preached last Sunday on 'Growth in Grace' was taken down and brought to our office by a reporter who fell over the door-sill of the sanctum so drunk we had to help him up and fish in his pockets for the bishop's sermon on holiness of heart and life, which we were sure was somewhere about him."

"Tut! tut!" cried Dr. Butterfield. "I think, Mr. Givemfits, you are entirely mistaken. [The doctor all the while stirring the sugar in his cup.] I think the printing-press is a might)* agency for the world's betterment. If I were not a minister, I would be an editor. There are Bohemians in the newspaper profession, as in all others, but do not denounce the entire apostleship for the sake of one Judas. Reporters, as I know them, are clever fellows, worked almost to death, compelled to keep unseasonable hours, and have temptations to tight which few other occupations endure. Considering the blunders and indistinctness of the public speaker, I think they get things wonderfully accurate. The speaker murders the king's English, and is mad because the reporter cannot resuscitate the corpse. I once made a speech at an ice-cream festival amid great embarrassments, and hemmed, and hawed, ?nd expectorated cotton from mv drv mouth, and sweat like a Turkish bath, the adjectives, and the nouns, and verbs, and prepositions of my address keeping an Irish wake ; but the next day, in the Johnstown Advocate, my remarks read as gracefully as Addison's Spectator, I knew a phonographer in Washington whose en lire business it was to weed out from Congress-

A GROWLER SOOTHED. 2}

men's speeches the sins against Anglo-Saxon ; but the work was too much for him, and he died of delirium tremens, from having drank too much of the wine of syntax, in his ravings imagining that 1 interrogations ' were crawling over him like snakes, and that ' interjections ' were thrusting him through with daggers, and ' periods ' struck him like bullets, and his body seemed torn apart by disjunctive conjunctions. No, Mr. Givemfits, you are too hard. And as to the book-critics whom you condemn, they do more for the circulation of books than any other class, especially if they denounce and caricature, for then human nature will see the book at any price. After I had published my book on The Philosophy of Civilization it was so badgered by the critics and called so many hard names that my publishers could not print it fast enough to meet the demands of the curious. Besides, what would we do without the newspaper ? With the iron n.ke of the telegraph it draws the whole world to. our door every morning. The sermon that the minister preached to five hundred people on Sabbath the newspaper next day preaches to fifty thousand. It takes the verses which the poet chimed in his small room of ten feet by six, and rings them into the ears of the continent. The cylinder of the printing-press is to be one of the wheels of the Lord's chariot.

The good newspapers will overcome the bad ones, and the honey-bees will outnumber the hornets. Instead of the three or four religious newspapers that once lived on gruel and pap, sitting down once a week on some good man's door-step to rest, thankful if not kicked off, now many of the denominations have stalwart journals that swing their scythe through the sins of the world, and are avant courieis of the Lord's coming."

As Dr. Butterfleld concluded this sentence his face shone like a harvest moon. We had all dropped our knives, and were looking at him. The Young Hyson tea was having its mollifying effect on the whole company. Mr. Givemfits had made way with his fourth cup (they were small cups, the set we use for company), and he was entirely soothed and moderated in his opinions about everything, and actually clapped his hands at Dr. Butterfield's peroration. Even Miss Stinger was in a glow, for she had drank large quantities of the fragrant beverage while piping hot, and in her delight she took Givemfits' arm, and asked him if he ever meant to get married. Miss Smiley smiled. Then Dr. Butterfleld lifted his cup, and proposed a toast which we all drank standing: "The mission of the printing-press! The salubrity of the climate ! The prospects ahead ! The wonders of Oolong and Young Hyson !"

Chapter IV. The Balloon Wedding

OUR old group of tea-table friends is dispersed. Our sour friend, Mr. Givemfits, the bookcritic, is dead. I meant to have broken to you the news more gradually, but it slipped out. He died of aggravated dyspepsia and virulent acidity of stomach. At the post-mortem examination the surgeon found that his spleen had greatly enlarged, this spongy viscus near the fundus of the stomach having entirely vitiated the left hypochondrium. It was found also that his gall had turned wrongside out. He kept up for a few days by the inspiration of green tea of the strongest sort ; indeed, cologne and camphor did not revive him so much as the smell of the caddy. But at last he gave out, saying, " No use ! My tea does me no good. Send that pile of books that I have not finished to the critic over the way. I am glad to get out of this miserable world. Good-bye. Tell Mr. Talmage to preach at my obsequies from the text, 'All men are liars.'"

Our friend, Dr. Butterfield, the bundle of sunshine, and our Miss Stinger, the censorious, are going into connubial partnership. When, one evening after tea, I saw Miss Stinger and Dr. Butterfield looking into each other's eyes, I said to my wife, "There is another match!" From the way the sun rises I can guess the "weather probabilities." The dispositions of these opposites have been rapidly assimilating. Dr. Butterfield is not so placid as he was, and by recently sitting up late at nights has become quite acerb and sharp in his temper ; while Miss Stinger, from dwelling so much in the comparative sunshine of the doctor, has been very much mellowed ; and so the Arctic and the Antarctic will probably meet at the equator. Indeed, I will tell you a secret: these two are to be married next Wednesday night.

As we were talking last night at the tea-table about this coming event one of the visitors cried out, " Speaking of weddings reminds me of the famous balloon wedding-. Tell us all about it." So, after the napkins had been folded and put in the rings, and the spoons had been lifted from the saucers into the cups, in signal that we were all done with the evening beverage, I told them a real story of eight years ago.

One day, when I was living in Philadelphia, a celebrated balloonist was ushered into my study. He had just arrived from New York with an invi-

THE BALLOOX WEDDING. 3 I

tation from one of my scientific friends who wished me to come on to Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the wicked city of New York (all Philadelphians think New York very wicked), and unite him in marriage with a most excellent lady of that city. The messenger said that after the marriage ceremony the wedding-party proposed to go up in a balloon from Central Park, the scientific friend before mentioned having made a costly piece of philosophical apparatus by which he expected to experiment on air currents as he ascended to the clouds.

The evening before the wedding I arrived at Fifth Avenue Hotel, where effort was made to induce me to perform the ceremony in the balloon and up among the clouds. But I refused, saying that while I believed in the " higher law," I doubted the legality of a wedding performed so high up above the reach of municipal authority; besides that, my head is apt to get dizzy at a great height, and I might not be able to see straight enough to tie the knot ; besides that, it is very risky for my church to have its pastor go so high up, lest, having got so finely started, he should not return, the memory of Elijah flashing across me ; besides that, if I should slip and fall from a height of two or three miles, somebody standing underneath would be almost sure to get hurt. Of course I remembered the proverb that " matches are made in heaven," but I do not believe it, for some of them are lucifer matches, and from the odor of brimstone I know they are made in the other place. Besides all these objections to performing the ceremony in the clouds, the reporters would get hold of it ; and as it was a dull time among them, I knew that what was left of me after the balloon peril they would finish.