his country, the mentor of the
_Spectator_ writes: "I shall also advise my fair readers to be in a
particular manner careful how they meddle with romances, chocolates,
novels, and the like inflamers, which I look upon as very dangerous to
be made use of during this great carnival" (the month of May).

[Illustration--Drawing: MEXICAN DRINKING-VESSELS, ROLLING-PIN AND WHISK.]

Some accounted for the assumed ill-effects of cocoa to its admixture
with sugar in the form of chocolate, for a few years earlier a London
doctor had declared that "coffee, chocolate, and tea were at the first
used only as medicines while they continued unpleasant, but since they
were made delicious with sugar they are become poison." Similarly, an
anonymous assailant in a pamphlet "Printed at the Black Boy, over
against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street," exclaims:

"As for the great quantity of sugar which is commonly put in,
it may destroy the native and genuine temper of the chocolate,
sugar being such a corrosive salt, and such an hypocritical
enemy of the body. Simeon Pauli (a learned Dane) thinks sugar
to be one cause of our English consumption, and Dr. Willis
blames it as one of our universal scurvies: therefore, when
chocolate produces any ill effects, they may be often imputed
to the great superfluity of its sugar."

[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Cacao Tree, Trinidad.]

In the New World fewer questions were raised, and the only
conscientious objection appears to have been felt by a Bishop of
Chiapa, whose performance of the Mass was disturbed by its use. The
story is told in Gaze's "New Survey of the West Indies," published in
1648, and is worth repetition. It is well to bear in mind his
information that "two or three hours after a good meal of three or
four dishes of mutton, veal or beef, kid, turkeys or other fowles, our
stomackes would bee ready to faint, and so wee were fain to support
them with a cup of chocolatte."

"The women of that city, it seems, pretend much weakness and
squeamishness of stomacke, which they say is so great that they
are not able to continue in church while the mass is briefly
hurried over, much lesse while a solemn high mass is sung and a
sermon preached, unles they drinke a cup of hot chocolatte and
eat a bit of sweetmeats to strengthen their stomackes. For this
purpose it was much used by them to make their maids brin