News / Ceylon

Below is a copy of a Post Card posted in Kingussie, in the Scottish Highlands dated June 23^rd 1906 and sent to Mussoorie, India arriving on the 15^th July 1906. I have transcribed it exactly as printed although the sender added a few comments. I believe it sums up all there is to know about tea and tea drinking.

Extract from Armstrong’s Self-Educator. From 1906

Mr. Barlow:- “Now, Harry, I want you to write down, in plain English, all that you know about Tea, which your recent lessons have treated of, and show me how you have profited by my instructions.”

HARRY’S ESSAY ON TEA.

Tea was first invented in Ceylon by Sir. T. Lipton, who brought it over from America to this country in his yatch, called “The Mayflower,” which sailed from Boston after great difficulties created by the crew refusing to do their duties and throwing many of the chests of tea overboard. The crew came to be known as “The Pilgrim Fathers,” because John Bunnion wrote an account of their voyage under that title.

Tea is a brown liquid and is made or confused in tea-pots by women. Its taste is not nice unless a lot of shugar is added to it and it is mostly drunk with milk also, to keep it from getting on peoples nerves.

The Rushins drink their tea in caravans, which they get from China.

People that like their tea little and often are called tea totlers to distinguish them from people that don’t take tea at all, who are called totle abstainers.

Tea is full of black things that float about in it, and you can tell your fortune by them, and whether you are going to marry a lady or a gentleman, and how many, and whether they are fat or tall, and whether it is to be this year, next year, sometime never, and a lot more things.

The different kinds of tea are Black tea, Green tea, Mazawat tea, D tea and other sorts. That is all what I know about tea.

Harry Sandford