204

Peruvian Suching Tubes.

[Book II.

No. 79.

Peruvian female taking tea witha sucking-tube.

which is common to all classes. “Instead of drinking the tincture orinfusion apart, as we drink tea, they put tlie herb Into a cup or bowlmade of a calabash or gourd, tipp’d with silver, which they call mate;

they add sugar and pour on it the hotwater, which they drink immediatelywithout giving it time to infuse, becauseit turns as black as ink. To avoid drink-ing the herb which swims at the top,they make use of a silver pipe, at theend whereof is a bowl full of littleholes; so that the liquor suck'd in atthe other end is clear from the herb.”“Frezier has given an engraving of alady thus employed, from which theannexed cut is copied.

In Frezier’s time it was the customfor every one at a party to suck outof the same tube—like Indians in coun-cil, each taking a whiff from the samecalumet. With the exception of con-fining a Company to the use of one in-strument, we should think this modeof ‘taking tea’ deserving the considera-tion of the wealthy, since it possesses several advantages over the Chineseplan which we have adopted. In the first place, it is not only a moreingenious and scientific mode of raising the liquid, but also more gracefulthan the gross mechanical one of lifting the vessel with it. It is moreeconomical as regards the exertion required; for in ordinary cases a per-son expends an amount of force in carrying a cup of tea backwards andforwards, so many times to his mouth, as would suffice to raise a bücketof water from a moderately deep well. In the use of these tubes there isno chance of verifying the old proverb—‘ many a slip between the cupand the lip’—And then there is no danger of breakage, since the vesselneed not be removed from the table. How often has a valuable ‘ tea-set’been broken, and the heart of the fair owner almost with it, by someawkward visitor dropping a cup and saucer on their way to his mouth,or on their return to the table ! Lastly, the introduction of these tubes,would leave the same room as at present for display in tea-table para-phernalia.

There is another application of them which some convivialists maythank us for suggesting. It has been regretted by ancient and modernepicures that nature has given them necks much shorter than those ofsome other animals; these philosophers supposing that the pleasures ofeating and drinking are proportioned to the length of the channel throughwhich food passes to the stomach. Now although a sucking tube will notalter the natural dimensions of a person’s neck, it may be so used as toprolong the Sensation of deglutition in the shortest one; for by contractingthe orifice, each drop of liquid imbibed through it may be brought incontact with the organs of taste, and be detained in its passage until everyparticle of pleasure is extracted from it;—being the reverse of whattakes place, when gentlemen swallow their wine in gulps. The mostfas-tidious disciple of Epicurus could not object to this use of them, sincenothing would touch his liquid but the tube; and as every person would

Frezier's Voyage to the South Seas, p. 252.