Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 714

In spite of their incessant mischief, their overpowering activity of mind and body – which must have induced the feeling in Mr Burton of being permanently located on a barrel of gunpowder lighted match in hand – it is impossible not to love the honest little souls, whose worst sins often proceed from the very best intentions; and accordingly we do love Budge dearly, when, on the following day, he surpasses all his previous achievements and covers himself with glory. Uncle Harry announces his intention of taking the boys to see Miss Mayton, and adjourns to the garden to arrange another bouquet, which Toddie is to present as a propitiatory offering. The children take great interest in the proceedings, and learning that Miss Mayton is the destined recipient of the nosegay, Budge asserts that she is 'just like a cake;' and announcing that he 'just loves her,' puts to his uncle the embarrassing query: 'Don't you?' 'Well, I respect her very highly, Budge,' replies that individual; and in answer to his interrogator, explains the meaning of the word respect as applied to Miss Mayton in such fashion, that that dreadfully acute infant comes to the conclusion that ''spect and love means just the same thing.' Mr Burton at this point judges it prudent to break off the conversation, and the trio start on their expedition. The bouquet is delivered without contre-temps; Miss Mayton is graciousness itself; and the visit proceeds so satisfactorily that they agree to remain to dinner. Uncle Harry has his misgivings; but beyond the upsetting of the contents of a plate into Miss Mayton's lap, his nephews' conduct is so very blameless, that it is with no feeling but that of lover-like ecstasy, that he finds himself seated in the deepening twilight by the side of the woman he adores, his eyes making confession of his weakness. Suddenly a voice from between them murmurs in sweet tones: 'Uncle Harry 'spects you, Miss Mayton.'

'Suspects me! Of what, pray?' asks the lady.

'Budge!' exclaims the horrified uncle – and we can well believe his statement that his voice rose nearly to a scream – 'Budge, I must beg of you to respect the sanctity of confidential communications.' But Miss Mayton's curiosity is aroused; and Budge is not to be silenced, even when his uncle explains to her that 'respect' is what the boy is trying to say, owing to his endeavour to explain to him the nature of the respect in which gentlemen hold ladies. 'Yes,' says Budge; 'only Uncle Harry don't say it right. What he calls 'espect, I calls love.'

After this, what can happen but that the confession should pass from the eyes to the lips? And Budge is forgotten and left out in the cold, until, waxing impatient, he gives his version of how he would behave under the like circumstances: 'I – I – when I loves any one, I kisses them.'

We feel that from this moment the lives of those blessed boys will be made all sunshine by their grateful uncle, and so doubtless they would have been but for one persistently wet day, during which we are sure no mortal power could have sustained Mr Burton, had it not been for the recollection of Budge's recent good deeds. How he lives through the rainy day – how Toddie twice places his own life in imminent peril – how Mr Burton provides employment for his restless nephews – how the artistic Toddie evinces a decided talent for wall-decoration – how he scalds his arm, and devours the curative poultice – and how on the following morning poor little Budge lets us peep into his childish heart and see the yearning for the mother who is away (being comforted by his uncle in a manner which induces us to offer to Miss Mayton our warmest congratulations), we advise our readers to discover for themselves. That Budge should be the first to inform Mrs Mayton of her daughter's engagement, we, knowing that young man, find only natural; and we are glad to be able to state that it is done with the same tact which distinguished his efforts to bring the young couple together. Toddie once more endeavours to put a period to his existence by swallowing a bottle of paregoric, but is fortunately cured in time to meet his father and mother at the station on their return, by a process which causes him more to resemble the whale than his favourite Jonah.

For a time Mr Burton has been too busily occupied to chronicle any more of the doings of the amusing 'babies.' He has married, bought a house, and settled in the neighbourhood of Tom and Helen Lawrence. We feel sure that Mrs Burton will prove no less admirable than Miss Mayton; indeed, recently breaking silence, her adoring husband has assured us that so it is; but as there are spots on the sun, so do we find that Mrs Burton has one slight weakness – namely, a conviction that she thoroughly understands how to manage 'Other People's Children.' Entirely disapproving of the manner in which her husband had allowed those two ridiculous children to tyrannise over him, and turning a deaf ear to his energetic assertion that all his time was occupied in saving their own lives and their parents' property from destruction, that admirable woman announces her views on the subject of their training. 'You should have explained to them,' she says, 'the necessity for peace, order, cleanliness, and self-restraint. Do you imagine that had you done so, their pure little hearts would not have received it all and acted upon it?' Mr Burton seems doubtful; but his scepticism only makes her rejoice still more in the prospect of speedily having Budge and Toddie under her own hands, during their mother's unavoidable seclusion in her own room on business of the utmost importance. Budge and Toddie presently arrive with the exciting news that there is a new little sister-baby at home, and that they have come to stay a few days. Mrs Burton is determined that her system of education shall begin at once, being anxious to prove its efficacy to her lord and master; but the boys have immediately disappeared, probably in pursuit of the dog Jerry (who has judged it prudent to retire into private life on their advent), and are discovered pickling tomatoes for their aunt by means of 'Mexican Mustang Liniment' and 'Superior Carriage Varnish.' We imagine Budge may have had some reason for his remark: 'I don't think you act very nice about presents and surprises.' Toddie spends the morning in a praiseworthy effort to hatch some chickens; but although he sits down 'ever so soffaly' because he 'hasn't got fessers,' the result is such as to necessitate a visit to the bath-room.

Undismayed by these beginnings, Mrs Burton, on preparing to go out in the afternoon, leaves the boys as it were in charge of the house, appeals in touching words to their sense of the beautiful not to disarrange anything, telling them that people should always try to make the world prettier, and departs with a quiet mind. Whether she thinks her method is attended with unequivocal success when she finds, on her return, that they have acted on her hint, and endeavoured to 'make the world prettier' by manufacturing – of stones, road-dust, and a noxious smelling weed – a fernery in her best drawing-room (it narrowly escaped being watered), we will not too curiously inquire.

Our author's account of her numerous encounters with Toddie – theological and other – from which she invariably issues worsted, and with increased respect for the force of character which Mr Burton had long since recognised in that young gentleman, is most laughable. She tells the boys interesting anecdotes and stories full of moral purpose, containing hints for their guidance, which the young logicians never fail to act upon in a way which leaves her powerless to reprove (if she does not wish to have her own lessons quoted against her), and with a dismayed sense of failure. She eulogises generosity, and forthwith the boys steal some hot-house grapes from a neighbour with which to present her on her birthday. She gives them lessons on the duty of making others happy, and they try to please her by lighting a bonfire in the cellar; a proceeding which disperses her birthday party. She sends them out of the room with a lecture on being quiet when Uncle Harry has the toothache. 'Even the sound of a person talking is annoying to him,' she says. 'Then you's a baddy woman to stay in here an' keep a-talking all the whole time,' says the irrepressible Toddie, 'when it makes poor old Uncle Harry supper so. G'way.'

She gives them instruction on the duty of working for others, the moral of which is pointed by two small itinerant Italian musicians, who, she informs the children, with beautiful enthusiasm, are doubtless toiling for sick parents who are far away; the result of which lesson on the dignity of labour is, that the two young monkeys perambulate the streets with Uncle Harry's precious violin and a whistle; and earn nearly a dollar with which to buy him a horse and carriage, which they have been told he cannot afford to purchase. It is with a sorrowful heart that Budge complains in his evening devotions that he has 'been scolded again for tryin' to do somethin' real nice for other people;' and that Toddie expresses his opinion that 'Aunt Alish ought to be ashamed of herself;' adding a hope that she may be made so. Poor Aunt Alice is gradually beginning to understand, having arrived at the knowledge by a thorny path, how very little she really knows about the management of other people's children. She tries to find out from Budge why their uncle succeeds better with them than she does, and learns a lesson on the art of making other people happy in their way and not in ours, which she takes to heart, if we may judge by the buns and candy which are manufactured by two small cooks in the Burton establishment, not without many perils to life and property. Perhaps the creature most to be pitied during the visit is the dog Jerry, who suffers many things at the hands of the boys. At all events he seems to be the only rejoicing member of the family at their approaching departure. Aunt Alice begs for another day, in which they distinguish themselves by ascending a precipice to get her a fern as a parting gift. Fortunately a kind Providence watches over them, and nothing worse occurs than a sprained ankle for Toddie. They are returned comparatively safe and sound to their father and mother, for which mercy we should imagine Mrs Burton offered a devout thanksgiving.

The last chapter is devoted to a conversation in which Mr Lawrence favours us with his views on the bringing up of children. Surely he is right when he says that 'love never faileth.'

We feel certain that, to those who have babies like Helen's to manage, and who have wit to read between the lines, these two little volumes will prove as instructive as they are amusing. We can accord them no higher praise.

TEA-CULTURE IN INDIA

The author of an anonymous tract printed in 1689, and obtainable gratis 'up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, without Temple Bar,' rather anticipated events in describing tea to be the leaf of a little shrub growing plentifully in the East Indies. No Indian tea found its way to Europe at that time, when haters of innovation were beginning to complain that through drinking of tea Englishwomen were no longer equal to eating beef of a morning. It was not until 1823 that a Scotsman, bearing the historical name of Robert Bruce, discovered there were tea-drinkers in Assam, who brewed their beloved beverage from the leaves of a native tree growing to a height of forty and even sixty feet; of which a few plants and seeds were subsequently carried by his brother, Mr C. A. Bruce, to Calcutta, to excite a transient curiosity, and that was all.

Time, however, brought Mr C. A. Bruce his reward. In 1834 a committee was appointed to consider the question of introducing tea cultivation in British India, and a scientific party under Dr Nathaniel Wallich – a Danish gentleman, whose botanical industry had won him the post of Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens at Calcutta – was sent to explore the newly acquired province of Assam, and make special inquiry respecting the tea-growing there practised. The result was that the committee reported favourably as to the feasibility of cultivating tea in John Company's dominions, Mr Bruce being selected to superintend the formation of government nurseries; and with the aid of Chinese seeds, Chinese plants, and Chinese cultivators, he set the possibility of producing good tea in India beyond all doubt. One consequence of the happy experiment was the establishment in 1839 of the Assam Tea Company, which took over the greater portion of the government gardens, started new ones on a larger scale, set about the cultivation of tea in good earnest, and after various vicissitudes, is now a flourishing concern.

The profitable industry is now fairly established in several of the provinces of the Indian empire, but Assam still maintains its pride of place, being credited with one half of the tea produced; the tea districts of Cochin and Tibet supplying twenty-six per cent., Darjeeling thirteen per cent., the Himalayan districts six per cent., and British Burmah the remaining five per cent. Darjeeling prides itself upon the superior delicacy and aroma of its leaf; but the rough, pungent, malty flavoured product of Assam, which owes its character to the use of native in place of Chinese seed, is the recognised standard Indian tea. If the Assam planters may congratulate themselves upon overcoming the old-time prejudice in favour of Chinese seed, they have equally good reason to rejoice at having found a way to dispense with Chinese labour, once a grievous necessity. By offering high wages and constant employment, they are able to tempt Bengalese coolies to leave their beloved villages, and by providing comfortable huts with garden-ground in which they can install their wives and families, insure their staying in their new home. That they may not be saddled with useless hands, the tea-growers employ native foremen familiar with the work to act as recruiting officers.

Twelve or thirteen years ago a violent tea-growing mania suddenly set in. Companies were formed by the dozen. The value of available land rose beyond all reason. Some unscrupulous schemers sold uncleared forest-lands as plantations; others, more unscrupulous still, obtained payment for plantations utterly non-existent in any shape, and genuine 'gardens' of forty acres fetched from twenty to thirty thousand pounds. Things have long since found their level again; but the possession of a tea-garden even now presupposes the possession of a capital of at least three thousand pounds, a smaller sum being deemed insufficient to start with, since no return is to be expected from a new plantation for the first three years, and it takes six years for the plants to attain maturity; then they will allow of eight or nine gatherings being made in a year, and yield four hundred pounds of leaves per acre. They improve with age; but planters of seedlings have little chance of seeing their trees at their best, if the Chinese and Japanese speak truly when they say the tea-tree lives to be five hundred years old, and grows better as it grows older.

For very many years after its introduction into England, tea was the subject of a double monopoly. The Chinese were the only manufacturers, the East India Company the only importers. The opening of the trade deprived the consumer of the benefit of the strict supervision exercised by the Company's agents, and left the Chinese merchants master of the situation. A deterioration in the quality of the teas sent into the English market quickly followed; and every reduction in the duty tended to the same end, by encouraging the importation of low-priced leaf of little use save to mix with that of better class; and so it is almost impossible to obtain at any price what those who can remember it call 'old-fashioned tea.' At a late meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, Mr Burrell, after remarking that India produced tea superior to any in the world in flavour, strength, and purity, complained that it was rarely used in this country except to mix with the inferior growth of China; and urged his hearers in their own interests and as a duty they owed to their countrymen in India, who had long toiled and struggled to meet their wants, to a more direct and extended use of Indian tea, and thereby afford a fair harvest of profit to its cultivators, for which nothing was now wanting but an increased consumption of their produce in this country.

Mr Burrell, we think, should rather have appealed to the sellers of tea; for unless they bestir themselves in the matter, but few of the millions of British tea-drinkers can have the chance of tasting pure Indian tea. We are aware that 'the trade' declare pure Indian teas unsuited to the national palate; but we have no faith in their judgment. If dealers in adulterable articles are to be believed, the British public's taste is a monstrously depraved one, preferring chicory to coffee, publican's to brewer's beer, turmeric and flour to mustard, and clever concoctions of all kinds to the things they pretend to be. It may be taken for granted that the Yankee vender of wooden nutmegs was ready to swear his customers preferred the ingenious imitation to the genuine article.

The tea-growers of India, however, have a hopeful prospect before them. The consumption of the produce of their gardens has risen prodigiously, since the arrival of eight chests of tea from Assam caused such a sensation in the London market that the importers obtained from sixteen to thirty-four shillings a pound for it, or an average per pound of twenty-four shillings and sixpence. In 1851 the exportation of Indian tea amounted to 262,839 pounds; by 1863 it had risen to two and a half million pounds; in 1876 English buyers were found for 28,126,100 pounds. Every year sees an increase in the consumption of Indian tea; and unless their Chinese competitors look to it, they will gradually be beaten out of the field, for India possesses vast reserves of land fit for conversion into tea-gardens, and could, if need be, supply the wants of the whole world.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL ON THE SPREAD OF DISEASE

We copy the following from our able contemporary, Nature. The views propounded have been already noticed in our paper on the 'Germ Theory.'

'In proposing a vote of thanks to Dr Corfield for his recent lecture on Infectious Diseases, Professor Tyndall paid a high compliment to the lecturer for the thoroughly sound instruction which he had so clearly conveyed. He had made it plain that contagion consisted, not of gas or vapour, but of definite particles, sometimes floating in gas, in the air we breathed, or in the water we drank; and that, like organic seeds in the soil, they multiplied themselves indefinitely in suitable media, the great probability being that these disease-producing particles were living things. A close study of the subject, extending now over several years, enabled him to agree entirely with the lecturer in the parallelism which he had declared to exist between the phenomena of contagious disease and the phenomena of ordinary putrefaction. The case of flies, for example, to which the lecturer ascribed the power of communicating disease from one person to another, was exactly paralleled by phenomena in putrefaction. Chop up a beefsteak, steep it in water, raise the temperature a little above the temperature of the blood, pour off the water, and filter it; you get a perfectly clear liquid; but that liquid placed in a bottle and exposed to the air soon begins to get turbid, and that turbid liquid, under the microscope, is found to be swarming with living organisms. By suitably heating this perfectly clear beef-tea, it can be sterilised, everything being killed which is capable of generating those little organisms which produce the turbidity; and by keeping it from coming in contact with the floating particles of the air, it might be preserved transparent for years. He had now some sterilised beef-tea of this sort which had been preserved for eighteen months in a state of perfect transparency. But if a fly dipped its foot into an adjacent vessel containing some of the turbid fluid, and then into the transparent fluid, that contact would be sufficient to infect the sterilised infusion. In forty-eight hours the clear liquid would be swarming with these living organisms. The quantity of the turbid liquid which attaches itself to the finest needle-point suffices to infect any amount of the infusion, just as the vaccine lymph taken up on the point of a surgeon's lancet spreads disease through the whole body. Here, also, as in the case of contagious disease, there was a period of incubation. In proof of what the lecturer had stated that the contagion of these communicable diseases was not gaseous or liquid, but solid particles, he would describe an experiment he had made only a few weeks since. Eighteen months ago he had a chamber prepared from which all floating particles of dust were removed, and in it he placed a number of vessels containing animal and vegetable refuse which soon fell into putrefaction, and also two or three vessels containing perfectly clear beef-tea and mutton-broth, as transparent as water, in which the infective particles had been killed by heat. Although all these vessels had stood for eighteen months side by side there had been no communication of contagion from one to the other. The beef-tea and mutton-broth remained as transparent as when put in, though the other vessels emitted a most noisome stench. But if a bubble were produced in one of the putrefying masses by blowing into it, and if on rising to the surface and bursting, the spray of the bubble was allowed to fall into the transparent beef-tea or mutton-broth, in two days it became as bad as its neighbours.

'Referring to another point on which the lecturer had insisted – namely, that there was no power of spontaneous generation of the germs or contagion of diseases, Professor Tyndall said that, though at present great names were opposed to that view, he would venture to predict that ten years hence there would be very few great names opposed to the lecturer on that matter. With regard to the power of specific contagia to be generated in decomposing animal matter, he would say that for the last twenty-one years he had been in the habit of visiting the upper Alpine valleys, where, amongst the Swiss châlets, there was the most abominable decomposition going on from day to day, and exceedingly bad smells, but there these contagious diseases were entirely unknown. If, however, a person suffering from typhoid fever were transported there, the disease would spread like wildfire from this infected focus, and probably take possession of the entire population. It might be taken, therefore, that any of these special diseases required its special germ or seed for its production, just as you required a grape-seed to produce a vine. He entirely agreed with all that Dr Corfield had stated as to these diseases 'breeding true.' He never found the virus of small-pox producing typhoid, or vice versâ. The subject was one of the most important which could engage the attention of the scientific physician.'

1

The subject of 'Visible Speech' is not unfamiliar to the readers of Chambers's Journal. In the number for May 12, 1866, a succinct account of the system is given – a system intended to remedy the utter want of agreement between the appearance and the sound of a letter or a word.