Page:The world's show, 1851, or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to "enjoy themselves", and to see the Great Exhibition (IA worldsshow1851or00mayh).pdf/31

 love of the Chinese infusion—nor for the fact of every maid-servant, when stipulating the terms of her engagement, always making it an express condition of the hiring, that she should be provided with "tea and sugar," and of every mistress continually declaring that she "would rather at any time go without her dinner than her tea."

What sage has yet taught us why womankind is as gregarious over tea as mankind over wine? Sheridan has called the Bottle the sun of the table; but surely the Teapot, with its attendant cups, may be considered as a heavenly system, towards which all the more beautiful bodies concentre, where the piano may be said to represent the music of the spheres, and in which the gentlemen, heated with wine, and darting in eccentric course from the dining-room, may be regarded as fiery comets. We would ask any lady whether Paradise could have been a garden of bliss without the tea-plant; and whether the ever-to-be-regretted error of our first mother was not the more unpardonable from the fact of her having preferred to pilfer an apple rather than pluck the "fullest flavoured Pekoe." And may not psychology here trace some faint transcendental reason for the descendants of Adam still loving to linger over their apples after dinner, shunning the tea-table and those connected with it. Yet, perhaps, even the eating of apples has not been more dangerous to the human family than the sipping of tea. If sin came in with pippins, surely scandal was brought into the world with Bohea! Adam fell a victim to his wife's longing for a Ribston, and how many Eves have since fallen martyrs to the sex's love of the slanderous Souchong.

Mrs. Sandboys was not prepared for so great a sacrifice as her tea, and when she first heard from Postlethwaite the certainty of Harker's departure, and saw, by the result of this second journey, that there was no hope of obtaining a supply from Cockermouth, there was a moment when she allowed her bosom to whisper to her, that even the terror of a bed in London would be preferable to a tea-less life at Hassness.

Mr. Sandboys, however, no sooner saw that there was no tea or sugar to be had, than he determined to sweeten his cup with philosophy; so, bursting out with a snatch of the "Cumberland Lang Seyne," he exclaimed, as cheerily as he could under the circumstances—

"Deuce tek the fuil-invented tea; For tweyce a day we that mun' hev;

and immediately after this, decided upon the whole family's reverting to the habits of their ancestors, and drinking "yale" for breakfast. This was by no means pleasant, but as it was clear she could do nothing else, Mrs. Sandboys, like a sensible woman, turned her attention to the contents of the ale-cask, and then discovered that some evil-disposed person, whom she strongly suspected to be Master Jobby—for that young gentleman began to display an increasing enjoyment in each succeeding catastrophe—had left the tap running, and that the cellar floor was covered three inches deep with the liquid