50 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



while another enemy of the cup that cheers ventured to 

 prophesy about the middle of the eighteenth century that 

 the pernicious foreign leaves would quickly become cheap- 

 er, wherein he was right, and that tea would then go out 

 of fashion and be replaced by sage, wherein he was hope- 

 lessly wrong. At the time when this wise person wrote, 

 an ordinary breakfast among the poorer folk was bread 

 and butter with sage tea ; but the cheapening of the real 

 tea simply drove such substitutes as sage out of use. In 

 revolutionary days in America various herbal substitutes 

 for tea were used from patriotic motives. After the 

 Boston mob had thrown the cargoes of the three East 

 India tea-ships into the harbour, and the colonists had 

 taken a vow to buy no tea which had to pay the obnox- 

 ious duty, their wives and daughters — ^daughters of 

 liberty' they called themselves — devoted their ingenuity to 

 devising fragrant beverages to take the place of the boy- 

 cotted leaf from the Far East ; and some strange decoc- 

 tions were made and perhaps enjoyed. The stalwart New 

 Englanders drank 'tea' made from the leaves of ribwort, 

 strawberry plants, and currant bushes, sage, thorough- 

 wort and other herbs. So-called 'Liberty Tea' was made 

 from the four-leaved loosestrife, while 'Hyperion Tea,' 

 says Mrs. Earle — an invaluable chronicler of colonial life 

 and habits — was from 'raspberry leaves,' and was said by 

 good patriots to be 'very delicate and most excellent.' 

 The beverage may have been so when tasted b^^ patriotic 

 palates, but we can feel prett^^ certain that many a colon- 

 ial dame must have thought with longing of the cups of 

 fragrant Hyson which she had been accustomed to enjoy 

 before the embargo was laid on the imported leaf. One 

 at least of the substitutes named above, thoroughwort, 

 is still used in rural New England for medicinal purposes, 

 if Miss Wilkins's stories may be accepted as authorities. 

 No reader of those delightful sketches will forget how 

 often thoroughwort tea, as a remedy, especially for an ail- 

 ing or more often supposedly ailing child, is suggested 

 and made by village wisdom. Rural medicine of the same 



