[Illustration of Japanese garden] _TEA-DRINKING IN OTHER LANDS_ While tea-drinking outside of Japan and China is not attended with any "high-days and holidays," still there are countries where it is just as important element of the daily life of its people as it is in the Land of the Rising Sun. Among the Burmese a newly-married couple, to insure a happy life, exchange a mixture of tea-leaves steeped in oil. In Bokhara, every man carries a small bag of tea about with him. When he is thirsty he hands a certain quantity over to the booth-keeper, who makes the beverage for him. The Bokhariot, who is a confirmed tea-slave, finds it just as hard to pass a tea-booth without indulging in the herb as our own inebriates do to go by a corner cafe. His breakfast beverage is _Schitschaj_--tea in which bread is soaked and flavored with milk, cream, or mutton fat. During the daytime he drinks green tea with cakes of flour and mutton suet. It is considered a gross breach of manners to cool the hot tea by blowing the breath. This is overcome by supporting the right elbow in the left hand and giving an easy, graceful, circular movement to the cup. The time it takes for each kind of tea to draw is calculated to a second. When the can is emptied it is passed around among the company for each tea-drinker to take up as many leaves as can be held between the thumb and finger; the leaves being considered a special dainty. An English traveller once journeying through Asiatic Russia was obliged to claim the hospitality of a family of Buratsky Arabs. At mealtime the mistress of the tent placed a large kettle on the fire, wiped it carefully with a horse's tail, filled it with water, threw in some coarse tea and a little salt. When this was nearly boiled she stirred the mixture with a brass ladle until the liquor became very brown, when she poured it into another vessel. Cleaning the kettle as before, the woman set it again on the fire to fry a paste of meal and fresh butter. Upon this she poured the tea and some thick cream, stirred it, and after a time the whole. Was taken off the fire and set aside to cool. Half-pint mugs were handed around and the tea ladled into them: the result, a pasty tea forming meat and drink, satisfying both hunger and thirst.