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By any person in the ordinary walks of life it would have been called a tea, but Pelgram preferred to denominate it a private view. Every time he completed a work that he considered of real importance relatively more often than modesty might have prescribed he celebrated the birth of the masterpiece by one of these oddly termed baptisms in tannin.
Then on the part of the envelope to which the flap adheres when it is sealed I placed some iron sulphate. When I sealed the envelope so carefully I brought the two together separated only by the thin film of gum. Now when steam is applied to soften the gum, the usual method of the letter-opener, the tannin and the sulphate are brought together. They run and leave these blots or dark smudges.
Tannin in tea has been a great bugbear with the ill-informed, bit it is not nearly so deleterious as some careless or unscrupulous writers would have us believe. In the first place there is a very insignificant quantity of tannin in properly drawn teas, say in those drawn for not longer than five or eight minutes.
Tannin is now prepared in the forest and brought to the tanners, who put their tanneries where they please, usually near some large city. The hides are first soaked in water, and every particle of flesh is scraped away. They are laid in heaps for a while, then hung in a warm room till the hair loosens and can be easily removed, then soaked in tannic extract and water.
The wood of the mangrove forms most excellent firewood, and is often used by small steamers as an economical fuel in lieu of coal, and is exported to China in the timber ships. The bark is also a separate article of export, being used as a dye and for tanning, and is said to contain nearly 42% of tannin.
Passengers could there eat flap-jacks architecturally warranted to hold together against the most vigorous attack of the gastric juices, and drink green tea that tasted of tannin and really demanded for its proper accommodation porcelain-lined insides. It was not an inspiring trip.
On the rare plant we had joined in esthetic appreciation, but the hemlock was to the old lumberman but a source of tan-bark. This search for tannin, by the way, is to blame for much wanton destruction. Young hemlocks, from four to six inches in diameter, are felled, stripped of their bark, and left cumbering the ground, to invite fire and to make of the woods an unkempt cemetery.
The tannin present in a fine Black tea, steeped at a moderate temperature for fifteen or twenty minutes will not harm a delicate stomach. We take quite as much tannin in some fruits, and make no fuss about it. Secondly, if a strong solution of tannin is taken into the stomach and there comes in contact with albuminous or gelatinous foods, it will expend its coagulating power upon such substances.
"From the seeds of the Lotus," said Pliny, "the Egyptians make bread." The Hindoos still eat the seeds, roasted in sand; also the stalks and roots. Our own water-lily is rather more powerful in its uses; the root contains tannin and gallic acid, and a decoction of it "gives a black precipitate, with sulphate of iron."
The tannin unites with the gelatine; and thus the hide becomes leather. This process requires several months. Hides are also tanned by the use of chemicals, in what is called "chrome" tanning. This process requires only a few hours, but it is expensive. In earlier times the shoemaker used to go from house to house with his lapstone, waxed end, awl, and other tools.
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