Dr. Pope lays emphasis on the word _flows_; it does not say _soak_. There is, he contends, an instantaneous graciousness, a momentary flavour that must be caught if we would rightly enjoy tea. Assuredly Dr. Abernethy, the celebrated surgeon, must be credited with the possession of this "instantaneous graciousness." "Abernethy," said Dr. Carlyon, in his "Early Years and Late Reflections," "never drank tea himself, but he frequently asked a few friends to come and take tea at his rooms. Upon such occasions, as I infer from what I myself witnessed, his custom was to walk about the room and talk most agreeably upon such topics as he thought likely to interest his company, which did not often consist of more than two or three persons. As soon as the tea-table was set in order, and the boiling water ready for making the infusion, the fragrant herb was taken, not from an ordinary tea-caddy, but from a packet consisting of several envelopes curiously put together, in the centre of which was the tea. Of this he used at first as much as would make a good cup for each of the party; and to meet fresh demands I observed that he invariably put an additional tea-spoonful into the teapot; the excellence of the beverage thus prepared insuring him custom. He had likewise a singular knack of supplying each cup with sugar from a considerable distance, by a jerk of the hand, which discharged it from the sugar-tongs into the cup with unerring certainty, as he continued his walk around the table, scarcely seeming to stop whilst he performed these and the other requisite evolutions of the entertainment." If every woman had treated her guests in the same manner, there would have been little outcry against tea. The innovation of a "bubbling and loud-hissing urn" was strongly condemned by Dr. Sigmond, who, writing in 1839, after quoting Cowper, remarked: "Thus sang one of our most admired poets, who was feelingly alive to the charms of social life; but, alas! for the domestic happiness of many of our family circles, this meal has lost its character, and many of those innovations which despotic fashion has introduced have changed one of the most agreeable of our daily enjoyments. It is indeed a question amongst the devotees to the tea-table, whether the bubbling urn has been practically an improvement upon our habits; it has driven from us the old national kettle, once the pride of the fireside. The urn may be fairly called the offspring of indolence; it has deprived us, too, of many of those felicitous opportunities of which the gallant forefathers of the present race availed themselves to render them amiable in the eyes of the fair sex, when presiding over the distribution "Of the Soumblo, the Imperial tea, Names not unknown, and sanative Bohea."