AROUND THE TEA-TABLE.
BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE,
_Author of "Crumbs Swept Up," "Abominations of Modern Society," "Old Wells
Dug Out," Etc._
PUBLISHED BY
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor,
BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.
BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.
PREFACE.
At 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. DEW. T.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.--The table-cloth is spread
II.--Mr. Givemfits and Dr. Butterfield
III.--A growler soothed
IV.--Carlo and the freezer
V.--Old games repeated
VI.--The full-blooded cow
VII.--The dregs in Leatherback's tea-cup
VIII.--The hot axle
IX.--Beefsteak for ministers
X.--Autobiography of an old pair of scissors
XI.--A lie, zoologically considered
XII.--A breath of English air
XIII.--The midnight lecture
XIV.--The sexton
XV.--The old cradle
XVI.--The horse's letter
XVII.--Kings of the kennel
XVIII.--The massacre of church music
XIX.--The battle of pew and pulpit
XX.--The devil's grist-mill
XXI.--The conductor's dream
XXII.--Push & Pull
XXIII.--Bostonians
XXIV.--Jonah vs. the whale
XXV.--Something under the sofa
XXVI.--The way to keep fresh
XXVII.--Christmas bells
XXVIII.--Poor preaching
XXIX.--Shelves a man's index
XXX.--Behavior at church
XXXI.--Masculine and feminine
XXXII.--Literary felony
XXXIII.--Literary abstinence
XXXIV.--Short or long pastorates
XXXV.--An editor's chip basket
XXXVI.--The manhood of service
XXXVII.--Balky people
XXXVIII.--Anonymous letters
XXXIX.--Brawn or brain
XL.--Warm-weather religion
XLI.--Hiding eggs for Easter
XLII.--Sink or swim
XLIII.--Shells from the beach
XLIV.--Catching the bay mare
XLV.--Our first and last cigar
XLVI.--Move, moving, moved
XLVII.--The advantage of small libraries
XLVIII.--Reformation in letter writing
XLIX.--Royal marriages
L.--Three visits
LI.--Manahachtanienks
LII.--A dip in the sea
LIII.--Hard shell considerations
LIV.--Wiseman, Heavyasbricks and Quizzle
LV.--A layer of waffles
LVI.--Friday evening
SABBATH EVENINGS.
LVII.--The Sabbath evening tea-table
LVIII.--The warm heart of Christ
LIX.--Sacrifice everything
LX.--The youngsters have left
LXI.--Family prayers
LXII.--A call to sailors
LXIII.--Jehoshaphat's shipping
LXIV.--All about mercy
LXV.--Under the camel's saddle
LXVI.--Half-and-half churches
LXVII.--Thorns
LXVIII.--Who touched me?
AROUND THE TEA-TABLE.
CHAPTER I.
THE TABLE-CLOTH IS 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 tea-cup 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 every 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 body, 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 you could see cities and mountains
bathed in sunshine, so, as you drink from the tea-cup, and get on toward
the bottom so that it is sufficiently elevated, you 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 through with her first cup of tea, when she would empty
her right pocket of sugarplums, 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
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," proposing 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 housekeeping 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 extension-table, 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.