h customers were expected to drop coins for the servants. The
boxes were inscribed "To Insure Promptness" and from the initial letters
of these words came "tip."

The _National Review_ says, "before 1715 the number of coffee houses in
London was reckoned at 2000." Dufour, who wrote in 1683, declares, upon
information received from several persons who had staid in London, that
there were 3000 of these places. However, 2000 is probably nearer the
fact.

In that critical time in English history, when the people, tired of the
misgovernment of the later Stuarts, were most in need of a forum where
questions of great moment could be discussed, the coffee house became a
sanctuary. Here matters of supreme political import were threshed out
and decided for the good of Englishmen for all time. And because many of
these questions were so well thought out then, there was no need to
fight them out later. England's great struggle for political liberty was
really fought and won in the coffee house.

To the end of the reign of Charles II, coffee was looked upon by the
government rather as a new check upon license than an added luxury.
After the revolution, the London coffee merchants were obliged to
petition the House of Lords against new import duties, and it was not
until the year 1692 that the government, "for the greater encouragement
and advancement of trade and the greater importation of the said
respective goods or merchandises," discharged one half of the obnoxious
tariff.

_Weird Coffee Substitutes_

Shortly after the "great fire," coffee substitutes began to appear.
First came a liquor made with betony, "for the sake of those who could
not accustom themselves to the bitter taste of coffee." Betony is a herb
belonging to the mint family, and its root was formerly employed in
medicine as an emetic or purgative. In 1719, when coffee was 7s. a
pound, came bocket, later known as saloop, a decoction of sassafras and
sugar, that became such a favorite among those who could not afford tea
or coffee, that there were many saloop stalls in the streets of London.
It was also sold at Read's coffee house in Fleet Street.

_The Coffee Men Overreach Themselves_

The coffee-house keepers had become so powerful a force in the community
in 1729 that they lost all sense of proportion; and we find them
seriously proposing to usurp the functions of the newspapers. The
vainglorious coffee men requested the government to hand over to them