and between meals; but with little avail. The
temperance-reform of our own century came none too soon.

Tea was too high priced in the first half-century of its Occidental use
to have been frequently seen in New England. Judge Sewall mentioned it
but once in his diary. He drank it at Madam Winthrop's house in 1709 at
a Thursday lecture, but he does not note it as a rarity. In 1690,
however, when not over-plentiful in old England, Benjamin Harris and
Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell it "in publique" in Boston. In 1712
"green and ordinary teas" were advertised in the apothecary's list of
Zabdiel Boylston. Bohea tea came in 1713, and in 1715 tea was sold in
the coffee-houses. Some queer mistakes were made through the employment
of the herb as food. In Salem it was boiled for a long time till bitter,
and drunk without milk or sugar; and the tea-leaves were buttered,
salted, and eaten. In more than one town the liquid tea was thrown away
and the carefully cooked leaves were eaten.

The new China drink did not have a wholly savory reputation. It was
called a "damned weed," a "detestable weed," a "base exotick," a "rank
poison far-fetched and dear bought," a "base and unworthy Indian drink,"
and various ill effects were attributed to it--the decay of the teeth,
and even the loss of the mental faculties. But the Abbe Robin thought
the ability of the Revolutionary soldiers to endure military flogging
came from the use of tea. And others thought it cured the spleen and
indigestion.

As the day drew near when tea-drinking was to become the great
turning-point of our national liberty, the spirit of noble revolt led
many dames to join in bands to abandon the use of the unjustly taxed
herb, and societies were formed of members pledged to drink no tea. Five
hundred women so banded together in Boston. Various substitutes were
employed in the place of the much-loved but rigidly abjured herb,
Liberty Tea being the most esteemed. It was thus made: the four-leaved
loose-strife was pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the
leaves and boiled; the leaves were put in an iron kettle and basted with
the liquor from the stalks. Then the leaves were put in an oven and
dried. Liberty Tea sold for sixpence a pound. It was drunk at every
spinning-bee, quilting, or other gathering of women. Ribwort was also
used to make a so-called tea--strawberry and currant leaves, sage, and
even strong medicinal herbs likewise. Hyperion tea was made