The best foods and the most valuable medicines are all as injurious as poisons, when they are taken in great excess. Every blessing which God has furnished to man is intended to be _used_, and not to be _abused_. Men are expected to learn how to employ them well, and how to avoid applying them improperly. The nerve-food ingredient of tea and coffee is no exception to this universal rule. When three or four grains of it are taken in the day, it refreshes and sustains; but if as much as ten grains are taken in the same time, it makes the blood flow with great rapidity through the supply-pipes of the body, and produces an uneasy feeling in the head, continued watchfulness, and trembling in the limbs. These effects, however, it must be remembered, are the results not of use, but of the abuse of the substance. The Chinese account for the sleep-banishing power of tea, when taken in excess, in this way: They say that many centuries ago there lived in the Flowery Land a holy man, who desired to spend his entire life in watching and prayer, but who was constantly catching himself napping in spite of every effort to keep himself awake. Getting at last to be very angry with the eyelids, which would not keep open, he one day determined that he would settle the business effectually by cutting them off. He put his shrewd plan into effect, and cast the offending eyelids aside upon the ground. The eyelids, however, directly took root, and grew up into two fine plants, which bore leaves, having the form of eyelids, and being fringed with hairs, like eyelashes, round their borders. The plants proved to be tea plants, and the leaves of the descendants of those plants now make amends for the offenses of their first parents, the holy man’s eyelids, by furnishing a drink which keeps sleepy people awake.