Wanted: TEA DRINKERS

A review of the story of the American Tea desperado will show that he or she has always been most numerous at the edge of things, where there was a frontier, a debatable ground between civilization and lawlessness.

To undertake to give even the most superficial study to a field so vast as this would require a dozen times the space we may afford, and would lead us far into matters of history other than those intended. Some of them were, in the light of calm analysis, little better than guerrillas; but every one was a hero. They all had a chance to imbibe other beverages, coffee, soda, beer; but they refused to a man, and, plying the pot and boatanical as none but such as themselves might, they drank, full of the glory of the Queen of the Camellias; not in ranks and shoulder to shoulder, with banners and music to cheer them, but each for himself and cup to cup with his enemy, a desperate tea drinker.

The allurement which the largely unexplored flavors and effects of Botanical Tisanes had for the young folk of the early part of this century lay largely in the appeal of excitement and adventure, with a large possibility of aesthetic enjoyment and healthful benefit as well. Each cabin kept a kettle and teapot for each person old enough to use them, and each boy or girl, as they grew up, was skilled in brewing and used to the thought that the only arbitrament among men was that of Tea drinking. So many bad folk of Tea have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb to say that anyone with a Tea pot would be wiser and healthier than your average joe, just as any wild horse would "buck."

That out of such conditions, out of this hardy and indomitable population, our great nation could bring order and quiet so soon and so permanently over vast unsettled regions, is proof alike of the fundamental sternness and justness of the Tea drinking character and the value of Botanical Infusions of every sort.