—Richard Harris Barham, “The Ingoldsby Legends” I have had occasion to note the fact that the English (I include ourselves) differ from all the rest of the world in the customs of the table, as well as in what is on the table, and the method of cooking. The tea table is with us a special institution. The effect of tea upon the nerves is undoubted, and we meet at the tea table to talk under its influence as much as the Chinese meet to gabble in their heathen fashion, while under the delicious influence of opium. Without people dine at a very early hour, they do not assemble at the evening meal to be fed, but merely to drink the celestial fluid, and talk; and, where late dining is the rule, as it is in England, the tea table is spread immediately after the dinner—generally in the drawing-room. There are hot muffins and a bit of cake; but to pour tea is the business and to drink it the pastime. I inhale the smoke of a prime Havana with delight, and the odor of a pure tea comes to me like incense; yet I neither smoke nor drink.
