ind of drink by
mixing water and molasses together, and putting in Indian corn.

Such drinks were taken at meals as we take tea and coffee. People also
drank a great deal of cider. As the cows hardly ever gave any milk in
winter, children were given cider and water to drink. But about fifty
years after the time that the first settlers came to this country,
people in England began to get tea and coffee. Tea and coffee were
soon after brought into this country. At first they were thought to be
medicines good for many diseases. Little books were written to tell
how many diseases these new drinks would cure. Root beer and birch
beer, and tea and coffee, were good things in one way. After they came
into use, people did not care so much for stronger drinks.

When tea first came, it was very fashionable. It was called the new
China drink. Along with the tea, people brought from China little
teacups to drink it from. Most of the cups before this time had been
made of pewter. The new cups and saucers were called chinaware. They
also brought from China pretty little tables on which they set the
teacups when they drank the tea.

When people first got tea in country places, they did not know how to
use it. There was a minister in Connecticut who bought two pounds of
tea in New York. He took it home with him, and put it away to use when
anybody in his house should be ill. He wanted the tea for medicine.
His daughters had heard about the fine ladies in town who took tea.
They were curious to taste it, and were not willing to wait until they
should be ill. So one afternoon, without letting their father know it,
they asked two young men who were friends of theirs to the house. Then
they got out the package of tea, intending to treat themselves and the
young men to a new pleasure. They knew nothing about making tea. When
they had boiled it a long time, they poured off the tea and threw it
away. They put the tea leaves on a dish, and tried to eat them as one
would eat spinach. This is the way they punished themselves for
disobeying their father.

Before the Revolution, when gentlemen called at fine houses in the
afternoon, the ladies always gave them tea to drink. As soon as a
gentleman's little cup was empty, one of the ladies would fill it up
again, and it was not polite to refuse to drink all the tea that was
offered. A French prince who was in Philadelphia during the Revolution
drank twelve little cups of tea one afternoon. The l