For many years the colonists had no tea, chocolate, or coffee to drink; for those were not in use in England when America was settled. In 1690 two dealers were licensed to sell tea "in publique" in Boston. Green and bohea teas were sold at the Boston apothecaries' in 1712. For many years tea was also sold like medicine in England at the apothecaries' and not at the grocers'.
Many queer mistakes were made through ignorance of its proper use. Many colonists put the tea into water, boiled it for a time, threw the liquid away, and ate the tea-leaves. In Salem they did not find the leaves very attractive, so they put butter and salt on them.
In 1670 a Boston woman was licensed to sell coffee and chocolate, and soon coffee-houses were established there. Some did not know how to cook coffee any more than tea, but boiled the whole coffee-beans in water, ate them, and drank the liquid; and naturally this was not very good either to eat or drink.
At the time of the Stamp Act, when patriotic Americans threw the tea into Boston harbor, Americans were just as great tea-drinkers as the English. Now it is not so. The English drink much more tea than we do; and the habit of coffee-drinking, first acquired in the Revolution, has descended from generation to generation, and we now drink more coffee than tea. This is one of the differences in our daily life caused by the Revolution.
Many home-grown substitutes were used in Revolutionary times for tea: ribwort was a favorite one; strawberry and currant leaves, sage, thorough-wort, and "Liberty Tea," made from the four-leaved loosestrife. "Hyperion tea" was raspberry leaves, and was said by good patriots to be "very delicate and most excellent."
CHAPTER VIII
FLAX CULTURE AND SPINNING
In recounting the various influences which assisted the Americans to success in the War for Independence, such as the courage and integrity of the American generals, the generosity of the American people, the skill of Americans in marksmanship, their powers of endurance, their acclimatization, their confidence and faith, etc., we must never forget to add their independence in their own homes of any outside help to give them every necessity of life. No farmer or his wife need fear any king when on every home farm was found food, drink, medicine, fuel, lighting, clothing, shelter. Home-made was an adjective that might be applied to nearly every article in the house. Such would not be the case under similar stress to-day. In the matter of clothing alone we could not now be independent. Few farmers raise flax to make linen; few women can spin either wool or flax, or weave cloth; many cannot knit. In early days every farmer and his sons raised wool and flax; his wife and daughters spun them into thread and yarn, knit these into stockings and mittens, or wove them into linen and cloth, and then made them into clothing. Even in large cities nearly all women spun yarn and thread, all could knit, and many had hand-looms to weave cloth at home. These home occupations in the production of clothing have been very happily termed the "homespun industries."
Nearly every one has seen one of the pretty foot-wheels for spinning flax thread for linen, which may yet be found in the attics of many of our farmhouses, as well as in some of our parlors, where, with a bunch of flax wound around and tied to the spindle, they have within a few years been placed as a relic of the olden times.
If one of these flax-wheels could speak to-day, it would sing a tale of the patient industry, of the tiring work of our grandmothers, even when they were little children, which ought never to be forgotten.
As soon as the colonists had cleared their farms from stones and stumps, they planted a field, or "patch" of flax, and usually one of hemp. The seed was sown broadcast like grass-seed in May. Flax is a graceful plant with pretty drooping blue flowers; hemp has but a sad-colored blossom.