June i, 1894.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
845 
TEA AND SCANDAL. 
The following a-nusing skit on (he Poets may be 
kuoWD to some oM Cantabs in Ceylon, but as I am sure 
it will be as new to most of jor readers as it was to 
me, I give it in extenso, all but Oowper's which unfortu- 
rattly is omitted : — 
The Poets at Tea. 
(Such la the title of a series of short clever piro- 
dies which appeared in the Cambridge Foilnightly, 
February 7th, 1888,) 
Macaulay, who male it :— 
Pour, varlet, pour the water 
The water steaming hot : 
A spoonful for each man of us. 
Another for the pot ' 
We shall not drink from amber. 
No Capuan slave shall mix 
For us the snows of Athos, 
With Port at thirty-3is 
Whiter than snow of crystals 
Grown sweet 'neath tropic fires, 
More rich the herb of China's fiekl. 
The pasture-lands more fragrance yield. 
For ever let Britannia wield 
The Tea-pot of her sirea ! 
TENNYSON, whj took it hot :— 
I think that I am drawing to an end, 
For on a sudden came a gasp of t,reath. 
And stretching of the hands and blinded eyea, 
And a (ireat darkness failing oa my soul. 
Oh, Hallelujah— kindly pass the milk. 
Swinburne, who let it get cold :— 
As the sin, that is sweet in the S'nuing, 
Is foul in the end thereof. 
As the heat of the summer's beginning 
Is past in the winter of love, 
O purity, paiuful and pleading ! 
O coldness ineffably grey ! 
Oh hear us, our handmaid unheeding, 
And take it away ! 
Browning, who treated it allegorically : — 
Tut ! bah ! we ta'ie as another case — 
Pass the bills on the pilh on the window-sill ; 
noiice the capsule. 
(A sick man' fancy, no doubt, but I place 
Eeliance on trade-marks, sir) — so, perhaps you'll 
Excuse the digression - this cup which I hold 
Light poised— bah ! it s spilt in the bed— well, 
lei's on go 
Held Bohea and sugar, sir ; if you wer e told 
The sugar was salt, would the Bohea be Congo ? 
(CowPER, who thoroughly enjoyed it :— omitted.) 
Wordsworth, who gave It away :— 
Come, little cottage-girl, you seem 
To want my cup of tea. 
And will you take a little cream. 
Now tell the truth to me. 
She had a tusiic woodland giin. 
Her cheek was soft as silk, 
As she replied, " Sir, please put in 
A little drop of milk." 
Why, what put milk into your head V 
'Tis cream my cows supply." 
And five times to the chill I said : 
" Why, pig-head, tell me why?" 
" You call mc pig-head," she replied; 
" My proper name Is Ruth, 
I called tint milk," she blushed with iiride, 
"You lade me sptak the trutli." 
PoE, who got excite 1 over it :— 
Here's a mellow cup of Tea I golden Tea ! 
What a world of rapturous thought Its fragrance 
brings to me. 
Oh, from out the silver colls 
How if wells ! 
How it swells ! 
Kecking tune, tune, tune, tune 
'I'll iho tiutiiiabulat'oii of tlie spoon. 
All 1 the kettle on the tire 
Boils its spout off with desire. 
With a desperate desire 
And a crystalline endeavour. 
Now, now to sit or never 
Oh the lop of the piile-faccj moon. 
But ho always came liome to te.i, lea, tea, lea, 
tea, tea. 
Tea to llie n— 1th. 
RosiKTTi, who took si.T cups of It: — 
The lilies Ho in my ladie's bower, 
(Oh, weary mother, drive the cows to roost ! 
They faintly droop for a little hour ; 
My lady's head droops like a tlower. 
She took a jiorcelain io her hand. 
(Oh. weary mother, dnvo the cows to roost I 
She pjured ; I drank at her command, 
Drank deep, & now— you undorstaud I 
(Oh, weary mother, drive the cows to roost ! 
BuRMf, who lilied it adulterated: — 
Weel, gin ye speir, I'm no inclined. 
Whusky or tay,— to state my mind 
For ane or ither : 
For gin I ta* the first, I'm fou : 
And gin the next, I'm dull os you : 
Mix a' thegither 
Walt Whitman, who didn't stay more than a minute: — 
One cup for my self-hood, 
Many for you. AUons, .camerados, we will drink 
together, 
0 hand in hand ! Thit tea-spo:n, please when 
you 've done with it. 
What butter-coloured hair ycu've got; I don't 
want to be personal. 
All right, then, you needn't. You 're a stale 
cadaver. 
Eighteen-pence if the bottles are retaruel. 
AUons, from ail bat-eyed formules. 
B. E. 0. F. 
The rabid feeling existing at the time of the War 
of Independcnoe in America, is well shown in tlie 
annexed extricc from the Pensijlvania and Weekly 
Journal of February 8tb, 1775.—" Boston Janujry 
23rd.— Last Welnesday evening about 60 1b. of Tea 
w«3 burnt i n the pirade at Portsmouth. It belonged 
1 1 a per^on who brought it from Salem, who was 
?o coDvii ced of his error in exposing that condemned 
commodity to sale, that he set fire to it himself in 
tha presence of a great number of people. 
We hear from Newbury that some time last week 
it was discovered that three or four cheats of Tea 
had lately been smuggled into that place and iold 
to diffecent persons, but as soon as it was known to 
the Committee they applied to the pereon who dis- 
posed of it (it being impossible to come at the Tea, 
and obliged him to give up the profits arising from 
the Bala thereof, amounting to about £50 L. M. for 
the benefit of the poor." 
This also is part of a long poem in the 28th June 
cumber of the same paper: — 
Whereas the rebels htreabout. 
Are stubborn still, and still hold out, 
Refusing yet to driut their Tea, 
In spite of Parliament and me : 
Thus graciously the war I wage. 
As witnesseth my hand— Tom Gage. ■ 
A, M. Ferguson. 
PICKINGS WITH A LOCAL APPLICATION 
The Aciricxdtural Gazetteoi Xew South Wales remarks 
as follows regarding Coffee leaves as a Beverage : — 
A decoction made from the leaves of the coffee 
shrub has long been used in the Eastern Archi- 
pelago, and has more recently been introduced to 
the coolies iu Southern India. A few years since 
it attracted considerable notice, and was recom- 
mended as a new article of import, to become a 
cheap substitute for tea. There seems to be no 
doubt that coffee leaves contain caffeine in sufficient 
abundance to make a valuable beverage, but the 
presence of an unpleasant senna-like odour would 
militate greatly against its popularity. As regards 
price, it is said that coffee leaves could be prepared 
(like tea) and shipped at Sd per lb. as against 
teas at (id to lOd. There exists, however, the 
dilTiculty that depriving the tree of its foliage 
damages the crop of berries and injures the tree 
itself. On berry-producing trees, therefore, only 
the leaves obtained in the ordinary pruning 
operations would be available, and these would 
seem to yield so small a supply as not to be 
worth the cost of collection. Growing the shrubs 
for leaf alone would be a very questionable under- 
taking, but there appears to bo no valid reason 
why, in the event of the berry crop failing, a 
portion, at Ica-st, of the leaves might not be 
gatliercd and prepared, if any means can be found 
of removins^ the objectionable odour. It ha.s been 
urged that the product would be chiotly used to 
adulterate tea, but even supposing that such ao 
adulterant could escape ready detection, the charge 
■ is uov a very soriou* one. 
