e
abstinence. His chief argument in tea's favor is that it is
drunk in no great quantity even by those who use it most,
and as it neither exhilarates the heart nor stimulates the palate,
is, after all, but a nominal entertainment, serving as a pretence
for assembling people together, for interrupting business,
diversifying idleness; admitting that, perhaps, while gratifying
the taste, without nourishing the body, it is quite unsuited to the
lower classes.

It is a singular fact, too, that at that period there was no other
really vigorous defender of the beverage. All the best of the
other writers did was to praise its pleasing qualities, associations,
and social attributes.

Still, tea grew in popular favor, privately and publicly. The
custom had now become so general that every wife looked upon
the tea-pot, cups, and caddy to be as much her right by marriage
as the wedding-ring itself. Fine ladies enjoyed the crowded
public entertainments with tea below stairs and ventilators
above. Citizens, fortunate enough to have leaden roofs to their
houses, took their tea and their ease thereon. On Sundays,
finding the country lanes leading to Kensington, Hampstead,
Highgate, Islington, and Stepney, "to be much pleasanter than
the paths of the gospel," the people flocked to those suburban
resorts with their wives and children, to take tea under the trees.
In one of Coleman's plays, a Spitalfield's dame defines the acme
of elegance as:

"Drinking tea on summer afternoons
At Bagnigge Wells with china and gilt spoons."

London was surrounded with tea-gardens, the most popular
being Sadlier's Wells, Merlin's Cave, Cromwell Gardens, Jenny's
Whim, Cuper Gardens, London Spa, and the White Conduit House,
where they used to take in fifty pounds on a Sunday afternoon
for sixpenny tea-tickets.

One D'Archenholz was surprised by the elegance, beauty, and
luxury of these resorts, where, Steele said, they swallowed
gallons of the juice of tea, while their own dock leaves were
trodden under foot.

The ending of the East India Company's monopoly of the trade,
coupled with the fact that the legislature recognized that tea had
passed out of the catalogue of luxuries into that of necessities,
began a new era for the queen of drinks destined to reign over
all other beverages.

[Illustration of woman]

_O TEA!_

In the drama of the past
Thou art featured in the cast;