CHAPTER IX 



ON TEA, COFFEE, CHOCOLATE, AND TOBACCO 



English tea-drinking— Story of our tea— Assam coolies — Manufacture in 

 India and China— Celestial moisture— Danger of tea— The hermit and 

 his intelligent goat — Government, coffee and caf^s — Chicory — 

 Chocolate— Aztecs — Kola and its curious effects — Tobacco— Sir Walter 

 Raleigh — Great emperors and tobacco — Could we grow tobacco? — 

 Story of a Sumatra cigar — Danger of young people smoking tobacco. 



ON every day throughout the year English people 

 drink about 600,0001b. of tea. That is about 270 

 tons, which would form, when made into the bever- 

 age, a lake quite large enough to float a man-of-war ! No 

 other civilized nation takes its tea in the reckless way that 

 we do. Yet our fellow-subjects in Australia drink even 

 more than ourselves. 



Almost the whole of this tea is grown in British colonies 

 OT possessions, manufactured by British subjects, and im- 

 ported in British ships. 



The coolies who work in the tea-gardens of Assam and 

 Ceylon, the Englishman who manages them, the engineers in 

 Glasgow and Newcastle who made the machinery, the ship- 

 builders, shipowners, and crews, are all fellow-countrymen of 

 those who drink the cup that cheers. Every sixpence in the 

 £8,000,000, which is our yearly account for tea, finds its 

 way into the pockets of our fellow-subjects either at home or 

 abroad. 



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