Page:Tea, a poem.pdf/12

12 delft tea-pot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs—with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distingushed themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot, from a huge copper tea-kettle, which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat, merely to look at it. To sweeten the bevrage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup—and the company, alternately nibbled and sipped with the greatest decorom, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and econimic old lady, which was, to suspend a large lump directly over the tea table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth,—an ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some families in Albany; but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flat-Bush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coqueting—no gamboling of old ladies, nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones—no