A tea box mystery in the public library

A delightful collection of Tea Boxes is on loan from a Goshen woman who values her privacy and wishes to remain anonymous.

I am not sure if the anonymity is because the collection is so valuable that she is concerned that, if her name were known, it might not be safe once it returns to her home. Perhaps, she is addicted to tea and concerned that her addiction might come to light and be a source of embarrassment. Or maybe some other reason - too obscure to even speculate on - may lie behind her seeking obscurity.

But is it possible to use clues in the collection itself to ferret out the identity of this individual? What can one deduce about her?

First, she is a “she” – and I’ve told you that because I’ve met her, so that eliminates half of the roughly 18,000 people in Goshen, leaving only about 9,000 people to consider.

Second, she is a library card holder so now we may reduce the number of candidates to say 5,000.

Next, because of the size of the collection (and we have no way of knowing whether or not she has many more), we can conclude that this person is not a child or even an adolescent. Surely that brings our number of possibilities down to less than 4,000 — maybe even closer to 3,000.

Of course, we must eliminate all coffee drinkers from our search. (Yes, there are some people who may be called “dual-imbibers” but again, due to the size of the collection, surely she is not one of them.) And since there are more coffee drinkers than tea drinkers, our number of suspects is now in the realm of a manageable 1,000.

Perhaps if we examined the collection itself more closely, looking for clues, we will be able to narrow down our search even further. Are any of the boxes foreign in origin? A cursory examination suggests most are, so either she is a traveler, she has a friend who travels and sends tea to her, or she is internet savvy and shops online.

Also, I think I see evidence of the use of both sugar and milk. Wonderful! You can now eliminate all tea drinkers you might know who don’t fortify their tea with both sugar and milk or cream.

And two of the containers are not tea boxes. They originally contained some sort of sweet. Our mysterious owner has a sweet tooth — another prodigious clue!

Come down and examine this collection in the Goshen Public Library in the Lobby Showcase. Quite possibly there are additional clues in it that I was not able to uncover. If so, perhaps you can unmask our mystery woman.

If you do, out of respect for her, please do not share your conclusion with anyone. Just keep the secret to yourself and let it steep, so to speak. Someday she may reveal her identity and you can proudly exclaim, “I knew it!”

If you have a collection you would like to share with our community via the Community Collections Showcase in the lobby of the Goshen Public Library and Historical Society, email me at jtarvin@hvc.rr.com.