few dashes of preliminary description will be necessary, by way of introduction, otherwise it would be impossible to comprehend the full scope and purpose of my narrative. If you be of the rougher mould, cherished reader, just cast yourself back somewhere at your ease, take this most excellently printed book deftly between your fingers, with a good cigar between your teeth; throw your legs over your desk, a gunny-bag, a fence-rail, or the mantel-piece of the bar-room, as the case may be; give me the benefit of your friendship and confidence, and read away at your leisure. But if you be one of those gentle beings placed upon earth to diffuse joy and happiness over the desert of life, I pray you consider me a serf at your imperial foot-stool; bend on me those tender eyes; and with the mingled respect and admiration due by all men to female loveliness, I shall proceed at once to tell you (confidentially of course)
A MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURE
It so happened in Moscow that I fell in with a very pleasant and sociable party of Americans, several of whom were in the railway service, and therefore might reasonably be regarded as fast young gentlemen, though far be it from me to imply any thing injurious to their reputation. Beyond an excessive passion for tea, acquired by long residence in Moscow, I do not know that a single one of them was at all dissipated. When I first called at the rooms of these lively countrymen, they immediately got out their tea-urns, and assured me that it would be impossible to comprehend any thing of Russian life till I had partaken freely of Russian tea, therefore I was obliged to drink five or six glasses by way of a beginning. Having freely discussed the affairs of the American nation at one room, we adjourned to another, where we had a fresh supply of tea; and then, after settling the rebellion to our common satisfaction, adjourned to another, and so on throughout the best part of the day. Sometimes we stopped in at a traktir and had a portion or two, dashed with a little Cognac, which my friends assured me would prevent it from having any injurious effect upon the nervous system. In this way, within a period of twelve hours, owing to the kindness and hospitality of these agreeable Americans, who insisted upon treating me to tea, in public and in private, at every turn of our rambles, I must have swallowed a gallon or two of this delicious beverage. The weather was exceedingly warm, but these experienced gentlemen insisted upon it that Russian tea was a sovereign antidote for warm weather, especially when dashed with Cognac, as it drove all the caloric out of the body through the pores of the skin. “Don’t be afraid!” said they, encouragingly; “drink just as much as you please – it will cool you! See how the Russians drink it. Nothing else enables them to stand these fiery hot summers after their polar winters!” Well, I didn’t feel exactly cool, with thirty or forty tumblers of boiling hot tea, dashed with Cognac, in my veins, but what was the use of remonstrating? They lived in Moscow – they knew better than I did what was good for strangers – so I kept on swallowing a little more, just to oblige them, till I verily believe, had any body stuck a pin in me, or had I undertaken to make a speech, I would have spouted Russian tea.
Why is it that the moment any body wants to render you a service, or manifest some token of friendship, he commences by striking at the very root of your digestive functions? Is it not exacting a little too much of human nature to require a man to consider himself a large sponge, in order that hospitality may be poured into him by the gallon? When a person of pliant and amiable disposition visits a set of good fellows, and they take some trouble to entertain him; when they think they are delighting him internally and externally – not to say infernally – with such tea as he never drank before, it is hard to refuse. The moral courage necessary for the peremptory rejection of such advances would make a hero. Thus it has ever been with me – I am the victim of misplaced hospitality. It has been the besetting trouble of my life. I remember once eating a Nantucket pudding to oblige a lady. It was made of corn-meal and molasses, with some diabolical compound in the way of sauce – possibly whale-oil and tar. I had just eaten a hearty dinner; but the lady insisted upon it that the pudding was a great dish in Nantucket, and I must try it. Well, I stuffed and gagged at it, out of pure politeness, till every morsel on the plate was gone, declaring all the time that it was perfectly delicious. The lady was charmed, and, in the face of every denial, instantly filled the plate again. What could I do but eat it? And after eating till I verily believe one half of me was composed of Nantucket pudding, and the other half of whale-oil and tar, what could I do but praise it again? The third attempt upon my life was made by this most excellent and hospitable lady; but I gave way, and had to beg off. Human nature could stand it no longer. The consequence was, I wounded her feelings. She regretted very much that I disliked Nantucket pudding, and I don’t think ever quite forgave me for my prejudice against that article of diet, though her kindness laid me up sick for two weeks. Nor is this an isolated case. I might relate a thousand others in illustration of the melancholy fact that hospitality has been the bane of my life. When I think of all the sufferings I have endured out of mere politeness – though by no means accounted a polite person – tears of grief and indignation spring to my eyes. Old John Rogers at the stake never suffered such martyrdom. But there is an end of it! The tchai of Moscow finished all this sort of thing – so far, at least, as the male sex is concerned. I would still eat a coyote or a weasel to oblige a lady, but as to drinking two gallons of strong tea per day, dashed with Cognac to reduce its temperature, to oblige any man that ever wore a beard, I solemnly declare I’ll die first. The thing is an imposition – an outrage. Every man has a right to my time, my purse, my real estate in Oakland, my coat, my boots, or my razor – nay, in a case of emergency, my tooth-brush – but no man has a right to deluge my diaphragm with slops, or make a ditch of Mundus of my stomach.
At the Peterskoi Gardens we had a little more tea, dashed with vodka, to keep out the night air. As soon as the fire-works were over we adjourned to the pavilion, and refreshed ourselves with a little more tea slightly impregnated with some more vodka. Now I don’t know exactly what this vodka is made of, but I believe it is an extract of corn. In the Russian language voda is water, and vodka means “little water.” There certainly was very little in what we got, or the tea must have been stronger than usual, for, notwithstanding these agreeable young gentlemen protested a gallon of such stuff would not produce the slightest effect, it seemed to me – though there might have been some delusion in the idea, arising from ignorance of Russian customs – that my head went round like a whirligig; and by the time I took my leave of these experienced young friends and retired to my room at the Hotel de Venise, it did likewise occur to me – though that too may have been a mere notion – that there was a hive of bees in each ear. Upon due consideration of all the facts, I thought it best to turn in, and resume any inquiries that might be necessary for the elucidation of these phenomena in the morning.
[Here, you perceive, I am gradually verging toward the adventure. The heroine of the romance has not yet made her appearance, but depend upon it she is getting ready. You should never hurry the female characters; besides, it is not proper, even if this were all fiction instead of sober truth, that the heroine should be brought upon the stage just as the hero is tumbling into bed.]
But to proceed. Sleep was effectually banished from my eyes, and no wonder. Who in the name of sense could sleep with forty tumblers of Russian tea – to say nothing of the dashes that were put in it – simmering through every nook and cranny of his body, and boiling over in his head? There I lay, twisting and tumbling, the pillow continually descending into the depths of infinity, but never getting any where – the bed rolling like a dismantled hulk upon a stormy sea – the room filled with steaming and hissing urns – a fearful thirst parching my throat, while myriads of horrid bearded Russians were torturing me with tumblers of boiling-hot tea dashed with vodka– thus I lay a perfect victim of tea. I could even see Chinamen with long queues picking tea-leaves off endless varieties of shrubs that grew upon the papered walls; and Kalmuck Tartars, with their long caravans, traversing the dreary steppes of Tartary laden with inexhaustible burdens of the precious leaf; and the great fair of Nijni Novgorod, with its booths, and tents, and countless boxes of tea, and busy throngs of traders and tea-merchants, all passing like a panorama before me, and all growing naturally out of an indefinite background of tea.
I can not distinctly remember how long I tossed about in this way, beset by all sorts of vagaries. Sometimes I fancied sleep had come, and that the whole matter was a ridiculous freak
