Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/410

 28, 1860.] cream in your coffee at a penny a cup?—why, simply enough, they thicken it with calves’ brains. If you don’t believe me, read ‘Rugg on London Milk,’ and see what he found in it with his microscope.”

“Well, I’m safe, then,” I interposed, “as I never touch anything but the best green.”

“That’s just the mistake you reading men always make,” he replied. “I dare say you innocently believe that green tea is made of the young tender leaves of the plant, but the real truth is, it is black tea painted—painted and bloomed like a worn-out old hag.”

Old Routitout dipped his huge fist into the caddy and took out a handful of young Hyson, and held it side-ways to the light on his open hand: “Do you see that beautiful pearly green colour, that’s called the glaze—a mixture of turmeric and Prussian blue. Think, my dear fellow, of the dose of poison you have been regularly taking every night and morning; perhaps you can now account for that dreadful nightmare you had last night. Old Sarah, the first and great Duchess of Marlborough, used to say that she was born before nerves came into fashion; and she never said a truer thing, for green tea came in about her time, and ‘the cup that cheers, but not inebriates,’ began to do its deadly work upon us Britons.”

“Do the Chinese drink green tea?” I inquired.

“Yes,” he replied, “the real young sprouts of the shrub, but not the glazed abomination sent over here;—that is manufactured by them expressly to suit the barbarian.”

“But is there no tea wholesome?” we all cried in astonishment.

“Yes,” retorted old Routitout, tartly, “your good strong Congou at 3'’s''. 4'’d''. is generally pure; black tea is mostly pure unless you happen to get some old tea-leaves redried. There are people who go about to club-houses to collect old tea-leaves, not to brush carpets with, but to recurl and dye, and sell again. If you happen to take a cup that tastes like hay, be sure that there has been a resurrection from the teapot. Hundreds of tons of it are made in London yearly.”

“Have an anchovy, Bob?”

“They ain’t anchovies,” interposed our old friend. “Do you think they can afford to give you real anchovies at a shilling a bottle? I tell you what they are, though, Dutch fish coloured and flavoured to suit the market; that strong red paste in which they swim is bole armenian, a ferruginous earth. You must eat your peck of dirt before you die, you know.”

“My dear Mr. Routitout,” interposed a quiet gentlemanly man of our party, “take a pinch of snuff to restore your equanimity.”

Our quiet friend might just as well have trodden at that moment on the tail of a puff adder.

Old Routitout took a pinch with a mock serenity, and said, “Yes, if I wished to be poisoned. Do you ever feel a weakness in your wrists, my dear friend, eh?”

“Good gracious me! no, sir!”

“Well, then, if you will only persist long enough in taking this kind of snuff, you will gradually find your hands fall powerless at the wrist, like the fore-paws of a kangaroo.”

Here was another sensation, and we all looked for some explanation.

“You think you are taking nothing but powdered tobacco,” said our old friend, glaring at the snuffer, “but I tell you there is either chromate of potash, chromate of lead, or red lead in it to give it a colour, and you get saturnine poisoning as a consequence.”

“Come, take a pickle?” archly interposed that incorrigible Bob, determined to rile our tormentor, “the vinegar won’t disagree with you.”

“You are verdant enough to suppose that is the natural colour of the vegetable, I suppose?” retorted old Routitout, harpooning a gherkin with his fork.

“To be sure I am, my Diogenes,” that youth replied, “come, get out of your tub and descant.”

“Then give Diogenes a steel fork, a knitting-needle—anything of bright steel will do to touch this verdant lie, and show you the ugly venomous thing it contains. Now, let that knife remain in the jar for an hour, and perhaps we shall learn the secret of these verdant pickles. The very vinegar is falsified.”

“While you are about it you may as well attack the whole cruet-stand!”

“Nothing easier in the world. That prime ‘Durham Mustard,’ for instance, is a delusion and a snare. There’s scarcely a bit of mustard that you can get pure at any price. This stuff is nothing more than 95 per cent. of wheaten-flour, just a dash of pure mustard, turmeric to paint it up to concert pitch, and black pepper to make it sting; and you have been labouring under the delusion all the while that you have been eating mustard, sir.”

’Pon my honour, I have,” replied Bob; “but what about the vinegar?”

“When do you particularly like vinegar?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I like a dash on a native, taken standing at an oyster-stall, just to cool one’s coppers after the—opera.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Routitout, gravely drawing from his pocket a note-book. “I’ll let Dr. Hassall have a word with you—this is what he says for your especial comfort: ‘We have found some samples of vinegar to consist of little else but sulphuric acid coloured with sugar: it is in low coffee-houses and oyster-stalls that such vinegar is not uncommonly met with.’ So you see, my friend, you are in the habit of ‘cooling your coppers’ with vitriol, sir, vitriol!”

“Now, then,” said Bob, not half liking it, “serve out the pepper, my boy.”

“Well, pepper—what you call pepper—is mainly flour and linseed-meal, flavoured with D. P. D.”

“What in the name of all that is sacred is D. P. D.?”

“Oh, D. P. D. is short for dust of pepper dust—the sweepings of the mills. The manufacturers supply it to the grocers in barrels, so that they can falsify at pleasure.”

“Don’t forget the soy while you are about it.”

“Well, that’s nothing more than treacle and salt, so says Hassall, and the fish-sauce nothing