erage. 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