The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1879-07-30
Russian Tea Houses.

A large hall, WalnSCOCeQ WlLn OAK
PAINTED in rich colors, where blue and
red predominate, and at the further end
q grand organ which is playing chorus
from M. Lecocqs last operetta. But for
this tune, and for the fact that some Gus
toners are seated at little wooden tables
drir king tea, you might fancy yourself
in a ritualist church. A statuette of the
Virgin, fronted by night, light always
in it's bath of oil, stands in
proximity to the yellow advertisement
of an English firm that exports bitter
beer, and glaring gly-illuminated por-
trait of St. Isaac, who is, perhaps, the
patron saint of the landlord, faces the
play-bill of the Imperial Theater of
French Comedians. We are in Mos
cow tea-house. 1t differs from the new
tangled cafes in having no looking glasses
or velvet settees. There is pile of
cushions in the corner near the counter,
where the landlady sits with a spangl led
diadem. neither reading or sewing, but
1ust folding her arms and smiling vaguely
till walters shall come and ask her for
small change. When a habitue of the
tea-house enters he signs himself before
the statuette, bows to St. Isaac, perhaps,
and makes for the pile of cushions,
where he selects his own and carries it
to the wooden bench on which he is
going to sit. Regular customers keep
heir private cushions at the tea-house,
lust as Germans keep their pipes and
schoppen at the brauerei. If stranger
comes in, one of the walters in white
linen tunics, with red-topped knee boots,
brings him folded red rug to sit down
upon. These walters are not always
Russian; IN good tea-house there will
be one or two Germans speaking French,
but they all wear the mujick costume
and have their hair clipped short. They
never ask Russian customer what he
wants; they bring him a small brass
samovar containing about a pint Of tea,
half lemon and cruet of vodki. The
charge for this is five copecks.
A Russian goes to the tea-house to
drink tea only, with flavor of spirits
in it; if he wants other beverages, he
drinks them at home. In summer he
takes cold tea instead of hot. and
suueezes more lemons than vodki into it :;
that is all the difference. He seldom
takes sugar, and the waiter does not
it unless asked for. Cigarettes
are the rule in the tea-houses, not pipes
or cigars; and the Russian never twirls
them himself, Spanish fashion, but buys
them ready made. On his saying
" Papyros," the waiter brings him a
polished brass plate holding a dozen
loose cigarettes of divers dimensions and
of three colors-white, buff and pink.
The last are the most delicate in flavor,
and are reserved for the bonnie boalche.
The Russian epicure begins with the
white ones. and as he sits divested of
his furred touloupa and wrapped in his
caftan. with his head leaning against the
wainscot, and dreamily beating time to
the music Of the organ, he offers per-
feet picture of Oriental repose. The
wainscots are marked with rows of
greasy black circles made by the heads
of customers. There is scarcely more
talking than in Turkish cafe; but off.
cials in uniform, who may have imbibed
the tastes Of the West, sometimes got up
games of cards, and intersperse their
play with squeaking iuterjections ex-
pressive of their emotions at winning
or losing. Only second-rate officials
patronize the tea-houses; and if haply a
parsonage of colonel's rank strolls in
with his crosses on his bosom. all the
other customers stand up and salam.
For this reason IN honorary Russian
colonel (perhaps an upper telegraph
clerk) when he receives q foreigner will
generally take him off to the tea-house.
in order to give him an idea of what
dignities are in Russia.
The prudent reserve which Russians
exhibit in the tea-houses does not pre-
vent them from engaging very readily
in conversation with any foreigner who
chooses to introduce himself; only the
foreigner will hear from them nothing
but praise unstinted about everybody
and everything that he may talk Of.
The doors open twenty times in an even
ing to admit itinerant sellers of food; for
no edibles excepu biscuits are sold by the
landlord. An old woman, booted, mut-
fled and wrapped in a sheepskin, comes
in with a basket of hard-boiled eggs,
salted sardines (Which taste like the skin
of red herring), and little rolls. Then
comes girl with selvas, or apple-cakes !;
then q man with slabs Of raw ham or
German sausage; then another with a
portable stove, which he installs in the
middle of a tea-house, that he may cook
flitters for all who may order them.
The walters provide salt, wooden plat
ters and knives to the customers for a
charge of a copeck: and as the refresh
ments sold by the hawkers are very
cheap, a mali may get long supper ut
no great cost.
The tea sold in the tea-houses is very
good, and Russians swallow surprising
quantities oft; three or four pints, with
a proportiorthte quantity of vodki, will
not seem an excessive evenings allow
ance for sober man. Coffee is never
asked for. In the lower kinds of houses
(where hand barrel-organs discourse
music) the tea is said to be a rebrew
from the leaves that have been used by
larger establishments; and here it is
customary to serve the tea ready favored
with vodki. It makes a potent bever-
age, which will send glow all over the
body Of an iSvoStctik (cabman) in cold
weather, and make him drive his sleigh
or drosky in wild zigzags, with many
wells. In the tea-houses of the lower
orders the shrine of the Virgin stands
Just within the door, and n customer
would no more think of taking tea with
out paying his devotions than he would
20 out into the snow without having his
boots on. When he has well drunk he
will make another stand at the shrine
on coming out; and ifa customer cannot
remain quite steady on his legs during
his brief orisons, some Good Samaritans
will always bcarlhim helping hand, lest
the unsteady brother, going out un-
shriven with so much whiskyfied tea on
board him, should cometo grief through
his impiety. 1t is a common phrase; IN !
Russia to say of man who has rolled
dead drunk into the snowand got frozen
there, "He forgot to pray after his tea. "
-Harper's Weekly.
Calculating Machines.
Staffel has invented an nrithmetical
machine in which three cylinders are so
arranged that they can work all the
simpler rules of arithmetic, carrying
multiplication up to millions by MIL
lions; if the machine is required to solve
an impossible sum. such rs subtracting
a larger number from 4 smaller, or dl-
viding a smaller sum by greater, it re-
fuses, and rings bell rs an admonjtion.
Coimar invented IN arithmometer in
which the action is rather by plates
sliding in grooves than by rotating cyl
inders: like Staffel's it can perform add!-
ton, subtraction. multiplication, di-
vision and evolution. Wertheimer, by
means of q metal plate with indices
notched teeth and holes, has contriyed
an apparatus for adding and subtracting