12 
THE LADIES’ FLORAL CABINET. 
met. The next year, Pasque Rossie, a Greek, opened 
a coffee-house in London. Rossie came from Smyrna 
with a Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, and in the 
capacity of servant he prepared coffee daily for Mr. 
Edwards and his visitors. So popular did the new drink 
become with Mr. Edwards’ friends that their visits oc¬ 
casioned him great inconvenience, to obviate which he 
directed Rossie to establish a public coffee-house, which he 
accordingly did. The original establishment was in St. 
Michael’s alley, Cornhill, over the door of which Rossie 
erected a sign, with his. portrait, subsequently announcing 
himself to be “ the first who made and publicly sold coffee 
drink in London.” 
Coffee became a social power earlier than tea. About 
the end of the seventeenth century coffee-houses were very 
common and important as means of social and political 
intercourse between men. They occupied the place that 
is now filled by the London clubs. Some were chiefly 
political places of resort for only one party; others, espe¬ 
cially the famous “ Will’s,” in Covent Garden, were liter¬ 
ary. Those who wished to see, to hear, or perhaps to bow 
to a prominent literary man, like Dryden, Addison or 
Defoe, would findjhim at a coffee-house. These houses 
had great influence in the formation of opinions. Men 
nowadays often take their opinions from their newspapers 
or the clubthen they took them from the coffee-house. 
Charles II., in 1675, attempted to suppress coffee-houses 
by a royal proclamation, in which it was stated that they 
were the resort of disaffected persons, “ who devised and 
spread abroad divers false, malicious and scandalous re¬ 
ports, to the deformation of his Majesty’s government, and 
to the disturbance of the peace and the quiet of the nation.” 
But coffee was too strong for the monarch, and the coffee¬ 
houses continued to flourish. 
At the close of the century the annual consumption of 
coffee in the United Kingdom amounted to about one 
hundred tons. The amount in 1873 was estimated at six¬ 
teen thousand one hundred and sixty-five tons. Its culture 
was introduced into Java by the Dutch in 1690, and it was 
thence extended throughout the East India islands. In 
1715, Louis XIV. received from the magistrates of Amster¬ 
dam ”a fine coffee tree, then bearing both green and ripe 
fruit. This, according to Du Tour, was the parent stock 
of all the West India coffee. The Dutch introduced its 
cultivation into Surinam in 1718. In point of quantity 
Brazil heads the list of coffee-growing countries ; its annual 
production exceeding that of all other localities combined. 
Coffee is spoken of as being used in France between 
1640 and 1660. Its general use through the Continent 
was encouraged by an accident. In 1685 the Turks were 
besieging Vienna. Germany was paralyzed, but John 
Sobieski, King of Poland, came to the rescue of the 
Viennese when they were nearly ready to yield from star¬ 
vation. His brave Poles burst down upon the Moslem 
squadrons, and a great rout ensued. They left behind 
them their rich tents and pavilions, and all their stores, 
an immense quantity, among which was so much coffee 
that it then became a common drink, and the first coffee¬ 
house in Vienna was opened by a Pole who had swum the 
Danube to inform the Germans of Sobieski’s approach. 
Burton, in his “ Anatomy of Melancholy,” published in 
1621, was the first English writer to mention coffee. 
“ The Turks,” he says, “ have a drink called coffee (for 
they use no wine), so named of a berry as black as soot 
and as bitter, which they sip up as warm as they can suf¬ 
fer, because they find by experiment that that kind of 
drink so used helpeth digestion and procureth alacrity.” 
It is noteworthy that the three principal dietetic bever¬ 
ages of the world were introduced into Great Britain 
within a few years of each other. Cocoa was the first of 
the three which actually appeared in Europe, having been 
brought to Spain from South America; coffee followed* 
coming from Arabia by way of Constantinople ; and tea, 
the latest of the series, came from China by way of the 
Dutch. 
Tea, or as it was invariably pronounced in the old time, 
tay, 
(“Here thou, great Anna, whom these realms obey. 
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.”— Pope.) 
was first brought into Europe by the Portuguese early in 
the sixteenth century. China is associated with the tea 
plant as Arabia is with coffee, and unquestionably it was 
indigenous to that country. Its history goes back certainly 
to the oblique-eyed empress, Ming-gen, 100 years B. c., 
who is said to have been the first to use a decoction of its 
leaves for drink. 
The use of tea was not common in Europe until the 
eighteenth century. About the seventeenth century a Rus¬ 
sian embassy brought back to Moscow several packages of 
tea which were received with much favor. For a long 
time it was regarded as a rare luxury. The gossipy Pepys 
in' his diary speaks of his first tea-drinking, September 
25,1661. He says: “ Went to Lady Castlemaine’s party; 
was treated to a China drink of which I had never tasted 
before.” It was a few years after this that the English 
East India Company made Queen Catherine of Braganza 
what was considered the brilliant present of two pounds of 
tea. During the first years of its introduction, tea was 
sold by the pound at from six to ten pounds, English 
money. 
Through the reign of Queen Anne its use as a beverage 
rapidly increased. Just after the accession of George II., 
the consumption amounted in one year to seven hundred 
thousand pounds, and the price, depending on the quality, 
varied between thirteen and twenty shillings per pound. 
Tea is a more popular beverage than coffee among 
our English brethren; the amount being imported into 
that country in 1872 was one hundred and eighty-five mil¬ 
lions of pounds—more than five times the amount of coffee. 
In this country the ratio is not so large. 
Tea-drinkings were very fashionable among our grand¬ 
mothers, and in the old-time novels tea-parties were a part 
of the machinery of the story. Even Mrs. Stowe, in “ The 
Minister’s Wooing,” opens her story with the statement: 
“ Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited Mrs. Brown and Mrs. 
Jones, and Deacon Twitchell’s wife to take tea with her on 
the afternoon of June 2, a. d. 17—.” 
Those tea-parties of the country-side where our grand¬ 
mothers met, drank their “ dish of tea,” and talked scan¬ 
dal, were very important occasions from a social point of 
view. They were less formal and more friendly events 
than almost any other of the social gatherings of the past. 
