There are two different phases of the tea-ceremony, the regular course and the simplified course, known among us as the 'Great Tea' and the 'Small Tea.' In either case, it might be defined in its present form as a system of cultivating good manners as applied to daily life, with the serving and drinking of a cup of tea at its centre. The main stress is laid on ensuring outwardly a graceful carriage, and inwardly presence of mind. As with the national form of wrestling known as _ju-jitsu_, with its careful analysis of every push and pull down to the minutest details, so with the Cha-no-e, every move of body and limb in walking and sitting during the whole ceremony has been fully studied and worked out so as to give it the most graceful form conceivable. At the same time the calm and self-control shown by the partaker in the rite is regarded as an essential element in the performance, without which ultimate success in it will be quite impossible. So it is more a physical and moral training than a mere amusement or a simple quenching of thirst. But this original sense has not always been kept in view even by the so-called masters of the tea-ceremony, who, like your dancing-masters, are generally considered to be the men to teach us social etiquette. Thus, diverted from its original idea, the Cha-no-e is generally found to degenerate into a body of conventional and meaningless formalities, which, even in its most abbreviated form as the 'Small Tea,' is something very tiresome, if not worse. To sit _à la japonaise_ (not _à la turque_, which is not considered polite) for an hour, if not for hours together, on the matted floor to see the celebration of the monotonous rite, daring to talk only little, and even then not above a whisper, in the smallest imaginable tea-room, is not what even a born Japanese of the present day can much appreciate, much less so Europeans, who would prefer being put in the stocks, unless they be themselves Cha-jin or tea-ceremonialists, that is to say, eccentrics. How to open the sliding-door; how to shut it each time; how to bring and arrange the several utensils, with their several prescribed ways of being handled, into the tea-room; how to sit down noiselessly in front of the boiling kettle which hangs over a brasier; how to open the lid of the kettle; how to put tea-powder in the cup; how to pour hot water over it; how to stir the now green water with a bamboo brush; how to give the mixture a head of foam; how and where to place the cup ready for the expecting drinker--this on the part of the person playing the host or hostess; and now on the part of the guest--how to take a sweet from the dish before him in preparation for the coming aromatic drink; how to take up the cup now given him; how to hold it with both hands; how to give it a gentle stir; how to drink it up in three sips and a half; how to wipe off the trace of the sipping left on the edge of the cup; how to