is busy with an energetic course of dry-towelling,
almost making the sparks fly with the
vigour of his friction, let us lift the warm
portière which hangs before the "chambers,"
and see what entertainment awaits the antique
statue when he shall descend, draped according
to the rigorous superfluity of the age.
Observe, the coziness, the warmth, the colouring,
the orderly disorder, the newness of the
early morn upon all things. Phyllis has been
with her besom, and has burnished and brightened
all things. But the fire is surely the most
enticing object; it hath now a clearness, a
cleanliness, a bold brilliant contrast of ebony
jet cubes with glowing red, which at a later
time it wholly misses. It contracts, at a
later time, a dusty rakish look, acquiring the
raggedness and decay of ages, and is no longer
a clean trim dandy fire, careful of its person.
That snowy sheet which lies upon the ground,
"got up" like fine linen, limp, damp, and by
mortal fingers not yet unfolded, holds the morning's
news, fresh from its oven— like the thin
rolls upon the table. The arm-chair is drawn
close, the white service is laid, and the kettle
performs its Pan pipes music upon a little
fanciful iron step made for it, and projecting from
the bars.

Now, when I descend as a draped athlete (for
I will no longer support the poor pretence of
Singleman and myself being different persons),
the very first object on which my eye falls with
a species of affection is this musical kettle. For
is it not in posse as to tea?— a vessel holding a
familiar and homely component, which waits
only the proper incantation, a few passes
necromantic, to become a glorified fluid and
transfigured liquor. I love this domestic
hocuspocus. My eye next falls with a pleased
recognition on my Loysel. A word here in favour of
ray trusty Loysel, his power, properties, and
beauties. I allude to the sort of burnished
racing-cup, hermaphrodite engine, semi-urn, half
teapot, yet not wholly either, which has sprung
from the brain of an ingenious Frenchman.

It cost me a pang to be unfaithful to the older
pot, the traditional vehicle with the spout and
loop handle, associated with the breakfast
Arcadia of block-tin, or Britannia metal, or of
shining silver (and yet it seemed to come with a
greater richness from the block-tin, but this
may have been fanciful); there was a simplicity,
a sweet uncivilisation, a pastoralness almost
Pauline and Virginian, that enticed. There was
an unerring certitude in the process, an unfailing
confidence in the result. Three spoonfuls
(was it?) for the beverage; one added
beneficently as largesse for the pot; one perhaps
added with a lingering hand to make all sure
— and the product came out as a conclusion
from logical premises. I own to a distrust of the
costlier metal; I always fancied the interior to
be slippery, and devoid of that richer adhesiveness;
and it seems to generate (but in this I may
do the nobler metal injustice) only a poor,
thinnish fluid, known contemptuously among
tea-bibbers as swash. And yet even now, for the
old brown enamelled pot— eminently plebeian
— holding no more than a reasonably
breakfast-cupful, overlaid with a rich varnish of a
distinct mahogany colour, with a wilfulness in
the lid to fall off and be smashed— for this
ignoble vessel, I say, I have longings indefinable.
It worked its office best of them all. The stream
it spouted so full, so tawny, so brave, so strong,
so fragrant, positively took away the breath; it
imparted an earthy flavour which someway the
others could not reach to. I never knew wherein
lay its mystery, in the material or in the globular
formation. But then it was eminently a
selfish pot, not by any means conjugal, wholly
bachelorial. It did not reach beyond a cup; it
broke down with ignominy when there was
pressure put upon its resources. You might
conveniently bake your beverage before tne slow
fire in its tempered clay. But for my Loysel.

It is the ingeniousness that takes the fancy
— the mechanical pleasure of working a little
distillery every morning. Above all, the
certainty. After all, that was but a rude
Hottentotide fashion, that flinging in of your
three spoonfuls, and the saturation following,
guided by no surer direction than the eye. A
doubtful uncertain process, resulting but too
often in painful miscarriage. A tea-making in
the rough on backwoods principles, and surely
unworthy of the enlarged science of our times.
This was the first cloud that stole in between
me and my little brown pot. By-and-by, I
basely deserted her, like a double-dyed Pekoe
villain as I was: I became the thrall of Loysel.
I become my own miller under the new
system, and in a little mill of my own grind
my own grain into a fine black flour. It is
brought to the mill gauged nicely in a little
measure, like other flour. This introduction
of human labour, this working for one's own
support by the sweat of one's brow, imparts an
indescribable zest to the process. I declare I
would not pretermit that operation (by my own
hands) for any pretence whatsoever; and once
was very wroth— very wroth— when
neat-handed Phyllis, not then precisely "my only
joy," thought to gratify me by presenting
this farinaceous matter already ground and in
a state of fine detrition. After this useful
labour and honest toil, I seem to partake of
my humble means by a sort of agricultural title:
having, as it were, come in from the fields a
brave husbandman. Then I take off the lid of
my Loysel— note that muffin discs, charged
with butter and glistening oleaginous, are
simmering into a golden brown before the fire, and
that Phyllis will be up by-and-by with a round
bulbous china dish, in which is imprisoned a
rasher— then, inverting my Loysel lid upon his
own apex, I bring over the kettle, and with a
steady hand begin to pour. For me has this
operation the charm of an eternal novelty. It
never clogs. I look out wistfully, still pouring,
for the first swelling of the golden beer-tinted
flood— mark you. the tea is already made— as it
wells and wells gently upward through the
perforated sieve, deepening yet deepening in