MISS BLANCHE SAYS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1569, 21 April 1874, Page 189

MISS BLANCHE SAYS.

<v ifiiF, BRET HAUTE, I ■,■■■'-"■ ' ■ ',-/' '■..:■' 5 'X' And you are the poet, and so, jou want Something—what is it ? a theme, a fancy ? Something or other the muse won't grant Li your old poetical necromancy: Why one half you poets—you can't deny— Don't know the muse when you chance to meet her ' ',.. i Eat flit in your attics and mope and sigh For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky, When flesh and blood may be standing by Quite at your service, should you but greet uoiniii ■ her. What if I told you my own romance 1 Women are poets if you so take them, Onei-third poet—the rest what chance i Of man and marriage may choose to make .. them,. i Give me ten minutes before you go— Here at the window we'll sit together, Watching the current* that ebb and flow ; , WatcMng the world as it drifts below . Up the hot avenue's dusty glow : •' ' Isn't it pleasant this bright June weather? ijuifihio. ■ ,: ' ; I Well—it was after the war broke out, ~,,i. And I Was a school-girl fresh from Paris ; Papa had contracts and roamed about, And I—did nothing—for I was an heiress. Picked some lint, now I think; perhaps Knitted some stockings—a dozen nearly ; Havelocks made for the soldiers' caps ; Stood at fair tables and peddled traps Quite at a profit. The shoulder straps fl Thought I was pretty. Ah, thank you, v really. Still, it was stupid. Batat&ia-tat I , Those were the sounds of that battle summer, &11 the earth seemed a parchment round and flat. And every iootfall the tap'of a drummer; And, day by day, down the avenue went Cavalry, Infantry, all together, Till my pitying angel one day sent My fate in the shape of a regiment That halted just as the day was spent, Here at our door in the bright June weather. None of your dandy warriors they : Men from the west, but where I know not j Haggard and travel-stained, worn and gray, With never a ribbon or lace or bow-knot. And I opened the window, and Jeaning there, I felt in their presence the free winds blowing; My neck and shoulders and arms were bare— I did not dream they might think me fair, But I had some flowers that night in my hair, And here on my bosom a red rose glowing. And I looked from the window along the line, Dusty and dirty and grim and solemn, Till an eye like a bayonet-flash met mine, And a dark face grew from the darkening column. And a quick flame leaped to my eyes and hair, Till cheeks and shoulders burned all to- . gether; And the next I found myself standing there • With my eyelids wet and my cheeks less fair, . And the rose from my bosom tossed high in air, like a blood-drop falling on plume and feather. . , Then I drew back quickly; there came acheer,' A rush of figures, a noise and tussle, And then it was over, and high and clear, , My red rose, bloomed on his gun's black muzzle.' '. ' Then far in the darkness a sharp voice cried, And slowly and steadily all together, Shoulder to shoulder, and side to side, Bising and falling, and swaying wide, But bearing above them the rose, my pride, They marched away in the twilight weather. And I leaned from my window and Watched if my rose Tossed on the waves of the surging column, Warnied from' above in the sunset glows, Borne from below by an impulse solemn. Then £ shut the window. I heard no more Of my soldier friend, my flower neither, But' lived iny life as I did before ; -I did not go as a nurse to the war— Sick folks to me are a dreadful boreSo I didn't go to the hospital, either. Toti smile, O poet, and what do you 1 ■ You lean from your window and watch life's ,;:,,,, column Trampling and struggling through damp and dew. Filled with its purposes grave and solemn ; An act, a gesture, a face, who knows •? Touches your fancy to thrill and haunt you, And you pluck from your bosom the verse that ; grows ' And down it flies like my red, red rose ( And you flit apd dream as away it goes, And think that your duty is done—now ; iH;:i don't;your' I know your answer* I'm not yet through. Look at thi» photograph—"lntheTrenchesi" That dead man is the coat of blue Holds a withered rose in his hand. That clenches i H Nothing! . Except that the sun paints true, And a woman is sometimes prophetic- '"'' 'mihded; "./'; , . And that's my romance. And, poet, you Take it and mould it to suit .your View ; And who knows but you may find it too Come to your heart once more as mine did.

TEA AND TEA TASTERS. Food Journal. Tea-tasting may not be quite so ancient as the fact of the presentation by the East India Company of two pounds of the fragrant leaf to Queen Catherine in 1664, yet we know that for at least a century young gentlemen have periodically repaired to the various commercial establishments in London where tea valuation was practised. There they inspected, critically examined, smelt, and tasted tea, not with the disinterested motive of furthering botanical knowledge, but simply for the education of the eye, the nose, and the palate with' a view to a commercial end. When the monopoly of the East India Company ceased in 1833, although tea-tasting had long been an established vocation, it then became highly popular as a pursuit eminently fitted for gentlemen ; accordingly numbers of striplings, fresh from college, docked to Mincinglane,; their parents or guardians having previously paid large premiums in order that they might be initiated into its mysteries. After two or three years’ sipping, smelling, and tilting the infused leaves about from pot to lid, fondling the dry tea, gazing affectionately at it, first this way then that way, now nearer the light, then further away from it, many of the chubby youngsters became impressed with the idea that they were accomplished tea valuers, and probably a few among them really knew something about it. However, they had all more or less complied with the requirements of the “ Lane” by tasting and examining numerous samples, and endeavoring to value them, and in the course of time the majority of these youths proceeded to fill remunerative situations as tea-tasters ( chasxees ) in China. But as it is impossible to place old heads on young shoulders, so it is hopeless to crowd a life-long experience into three years, and expect its retention and digestion by any youth, no matter how great his thirst lor information may be. Consequently, while some of the embryo valuers, favorably situated, did fairly well, others made serious losses for their indignant employers on every chop of tea they tasted, purchased, and shipped home. Meanwhile the Chinese merchants looked on with beaming countenances, and chuckled in their long sleeves at the errors (so favorable to themselves) of each new arrival of British cherubs, who in most cases, were ill-matched against the wily brokers of the Yangtsze ports, Foochow and Canton. But a jworse result and an increased evil soon followed, from which the public here are now suffering. It was to be expected that the training which these young gentlemen received in Mincinglane, and elsewhere in its neighbourhood, would have taught them the structural peculiarities which distinguish the tea leaf from that of the willow, the fragrant olive, and others used by the Chinese for adulteration and scenting. An idea may also have been prevalent in the minds of their friends that they had mastered the difference between exhausted tea leaves and those which as yet remained innocent of the pot; that they could instantly decide between a pinch of broken Souchong and a pinch of rice husks and chopped straw; and could say in what respects genuine gunpowder, hyson, and caper were irreconcilable with the presence of iron filings, silica, caterpillars’ droppings, plumbago, lamp black, ferruginous earth, and lively maggots. Yet the simple power of observation necessary to detect such evident and flagrant adulterations appears to have been denied, not only to the cherubs, but equally to the present race of chaszees , who, we may remark, are no longer the chubby youth of yore, but go out to China connoisseurs iu wine and cigars, and knowing as to the points of a horse, although somewhat deficient in structural botany and the use of the microscope. Had these manly requirements been reversed the public papers might have been spared chronicling the late disgraceful facts connected with some recent sales of tea in Mincinglane, imported by the steamer Sarpedon, and saved from the wreck of the Lalla Eookb. There may have been some excuse for the mistakes made by the stripling tea-tksters of twenty years ago, as their errors arose chiefly from inexperience ; but now the situation is entirely changed. When we find 1,000 boxes described in a brokers catalogue as “ Extra Fine New Season’s Moyune Gunpowder,’* for sale by auction in Mincing-lane, and are assured by Dr. Letheby that this contains from 40 to 43 per cent, of iron filings, and 19 per cent, of silica, we cannot admit youth and inexperience on the part of the buyer in China as any palliation of such a gross imposition. In short, the transaction exhibits an unblushing fraud, commencing with the Chinese manipulator, and perpetuated through the culpable ignorance or guilty connivance of the thaszee, the neglect or apathy of the Customs authorities there and here, the selling broker, and the wholesale buyer. Thus we see the relation between cause and'effeot strikingly exemplified. Mincinglane originally sent out the inexperienced but confident cherub to buy tea in China; the sharp and unscrupulous native broker discovered the ease with which the cherub could be overreached in the matter of price, quickly followed up the swindle by gross adulteration ; and the result appears in the hundreds of tons of trash with which annually, of late years, the market has been clogged.