yet on terra
firma still, for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of
deeper blue which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has
made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with
women's faces and the women, if possible, with still more
womanish expressions.

"Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady
from a salver--two miles off. See how distance seems to set off
respect! And here the same lady, or another--for likeness is
identity on tea-cups--is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored
on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty,
mincing foot, which is in a right angle of incidence (as angles
go in our world) that must infallibly land her in the midst of a
flowery mead--a furlong off on the other side of the same
strange stream!"

The _Spectator_ and the _Tatter_ were also susceptible to the
female influence that tea inspired. In both of these journals there
are frequent allusions to tea-parties and china. At these
gatherings, poets and dilletante literary gentlemen read their
verses and essays to the ladies, who criticised their merits.
These "literary teas" became so contagious that a burning desire
for authorship took possession of the ladies, for among those
who made their debut as authors about this time were Fanny
Burney, Mrs. Alphra Behn, Mrs. Manley, the Countess of Winchelsea,
and a host of others.

One of the readers of the _Spectator_ wrote as follows:

"_Mr. Spectator:_ Your paper is a part of my tea-equipage, and
my servant knows my humor so well that, calling for my breakfast
this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered,
the _Spectator_ was not come in, but that the tea-kettle
boiled, and she expected it every minute."

Crabbe, too, was a devotee of ladies, literature, and tea, for he
wrote:

"The gentle fair on nervous tea relies,
Whilst gay good-nature sparkles in her eyes;
And inoffensive scandal fluttering round,
Too rough to tickle and too light to wound."

What better proof do we want, therefore, that to women's
influence is due the cultivation and retention of the tea habit?
Without tea, what would become of women, and without women
and tea, what would become of our domestic literary men and
matinee idols? They would not sit at home or in salons and
write and act things. There would be no homes to sit in, no
salons or theatres to act in, and dramatic art would receive a
blo