'Tis woman still that makes or mars the man. And so it is, the creature can beguile The fairest faces of the readiest smile. The third who comes the hyson to inhale, If not a man, at least appears a male. . . . Last of the rout, and dogg'd with public cares, The politician stumbles up the stairs; Whose dusky soul nor beauty can illume, Nor wine dispel his patriotic gloom. In restless ire from guest to guest he goes, And names us all among our country's foes; Swears 'tis a shame that we should drink our tea, 'Till wrongs are righted and the nation free, That priests and poets are a venal race, Who preach for patronage and rhyme for place; Declares that boys and girls should not be cooing. When England's hope is bankruptcy and ruin; That wiser 'twere the coming wrath to fly, And that old women should make haste to die. Condensed from a poem published in _Fraser's Magazine_, January, 1857, and ascribed to Hartley Coleridge. _LADIES, LITERATURE, AND TEA_ In spite of the fact that coffee is just as important a beverage as tea, tea has been sipped more in literature. Tea is certainly as much of a social drink as coffee, and more of a domestic, for the reason that the teacup hours are the family hours. As these are the hours when the sexes are thrown together, and as most of the poetry and philosophy of tea-drinking teem with female virtues, vanities, and whimsicalities, the inference is that, without women, tea would be nothing, and without tea, women would be stale, flat, and uninteresting. With them it is a polite, purring, soft, gentle, kind, sympathetic, delicious beverage. In support of this theory, notice what Pope, Gay, Crabbe, Cowper, Dryden, and others have written on the subject. "The tea-cup times of hood and hoop, And when the patch was worn" --wrote Tennyson of the early half of the seventeenth century. What a suggestive couplet, full of the foibles and follies of the times! A picture a la mode of the period when fair dames made their red cheeks cute with eccentric patches. Ornamented with high coiffures, powdered hair, robed in satin petticoats and square-cut bodices, they blossomed, according to the old engravings, into most fetching figures. Even the beaux of the day affected feminine frills in their many-colored, bell-skirted waistcoats, lace ruffles, patches, and powdered queues. Dryden must have succumbed to the charms of women through tea, when he wrote: "And thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes take counsel, and sometimes tay." From the great vogue which tea started grew a taste for china; the more peculiar and striking the design, the more valuable the tea-set.