tint, until it becomes a full mahogany brown. A
sigh of relief as the flood reaches high-water
mark— carefully replace the inverted cover— and
Loysel is ready.

Take it that we have been abroad last night
hearing chimes at midnight, and such
unbecoming music, and that we wake with a new
and artificial palate made of heated copper.
How gratefully we drain the bowl— for bowl
it must be— a satisfying immensity— a small
tea ocean— which we may swill and swill
again, irrigating the parched surfaces. There
is nothing comparable to that matutinal
refreshment. There is a purity and innocence
about that intemperance, compared with which
your sharp stinging garish sodas sound
mundane and guilty. Rowing gentlemen rave of
that frothy decapitation of their first "head"
of porter (so it runs in their low phrase)
after a protracted training abstinence. Yet it
cannot compare with this early draught. Who
was it in the novels that spoke unctuously of a
"dish" of tea? I love the word. "Another
dish of tea, madam!" It was the elderly gentleman
of the party— the benevolent monitor in
smalls— say Mr. Woodville. One of the
tenderest recollections of childhood, a green patch
amid the brakes and briars of school days, is
associated with the beverage. Nauseating at
last the rough coarse substantial fare of the
place, the lumps of good ploughman's feeding
of the first quality, the strong milks and
stronger meats, we fly of an evening to the
awful presence of authority, and with fear
crave leave to retire to those bright paradisal
regions of warm fires and matronly care known
as the Infirmary. And passing an awful probation
— not without suspicion and a searching
examination into the genuineness of those symptoms
— alas, at that guileless age, but too often
simulated!— we fly exulting to the warm chamber
of beatitude, the nectar made and served by
Hebe, the glorified elderly matron; the buttered
toast, conveying more accurately than any earthly
similitude the exact savour of manna.

After the tempest, when the stormy winds
have been blowing cruelly, oh, welcome comes
the first draught of tea— even of that poor
diluted wash which Phyllis serves to us for
sixpence from behind the refreshment counter.
Gratefully it soothes its way downwards after
that bitter labour. It warms and invigorates.
It works its office domestically. It does not
restore with violence, as is the fashion with
brandies, and such rude awakeners.

And now remains that unpleasing duty of
protest alluded to delicately but a few minutes
since. I must lift up my voice, temporarily,
against this sweet consoler and dear delight.
The seductive drink is demoralising our
women. Not putting too fine a point upon it—
calling a spade a spade— making no bones
about it in— short, putting it as plainly and
grossly as possible— they have grown addicted
to this liquor, and are uproarious over their
cups. The practice is growing monstrous, and
cries out for repression. Permit me to illustrate
my meaning by a little tableau drawn from our
hearths and altars.

The little tableau is in this wise: Straying
carelessly, as it might be, in the capacity of a child
of nature— a capacity which I take on me as the
shades of visiting-time close in slowly— into
particular drawing-room pastures, where I am
always welcome to browse (colloquially), I am
in the habit of taking the strain off the overwrought
mind by easy and familiar converse
with the ladies of our islands. In this rôle of a
lord of the creation, enthroned in an easy-chair
— specially when not constrained by the
presence of competing lords of the creation— the
mind takes a healthy diversion, and homage
is done to that complacent superiority in
most gratifying fashion. It is what may be
termed the lull of the day; the toils of morn
and of noon are spent, and the mind is drawing
back and gathering itself up for a further spring,
in the direction of dinner. Over the whole
plays the lurid half-light of the crackling fire.
Pretty tableau!
And yet the scene has been blighted. This
fair picture of innocence has been ravaged and
laid waste. The demon of drink has penetrated,
and is demoralising our women fast. A system
of gigantic dram-drinking has grown up, and the
virgins are addicted to hyson. I stray into my
accustomed pastures, expecting the familiar partial
solitude, the selected few, the half light, the
ready chair; and, above all, that pleasing monopoly
and exclusive patent of conversation which
no one is willing to infringe. I find, instead,
that I have strayed into a meeting of lay women
— a whole flower-bed of bonnets— a glare of
colours (unrelieved by any bold masculine black)
perfectly offensive to the eye. It is a dwelling-house
overcrowded; and I think the Common
Lodging-house Act would apply. Looking round,
and whollyoverborne by the hum of excited voices
and exaggerated gesticulation, and that putting
home of favourite views and theories by the
illogical aid of profuse affectionate endearments,
I collect my wandering senses, and
must be blind indeed not to see that other
influences besides a pure feminine hilarity
have been at work. No disrespect is here
intended, I solemnly protest; but whence this
suspicious unloosing of tongues? The lady
at the bar— fair tapster!— who is "drawing"
the brown stout liquor with a professional
deftness, can barely meet the requirements of
the demand. There is a run upon the beverage,
and a clatter of silver upon china, and an
importunate persistency. I can see my dear
sisters mellowing perceptibly. As with that
other intemperance, it hurries to the cheeks and
to the extremity of the little facial mountain,
flushing them suggestively.

I admire the ineffable relish, the luscious
gulp, with which some despatch their dram; it
is not, so to speak, tossed off— I cannot bring
myself to the barbarism "swigged," and yet it
verges most nearly on that muscular act— but
slowly absorbed in large exhaustive draughts.
The mouth is well filled, the heat and strength