Liberty Tea was the most popular of these Revolutionary substitutes. It sold for sixpence a pound. It was made from the four-leaved loose-strife, a common-growing herb. It was pulled up whole like flax, its stalks were stripped of the leaves and then boiled. The leaves were put in a kettle with the liquor from the stalks and again boiled. Then the leaves were dried in an oven. Sage and rib-wort, strawberry leaves and currant leaves, made a shift to serve as tea. Hyperion or Labrador Tea, much vaunted, was only raspberry leaves, but was not such a wholly odious beverage. It was loudly praised in the patriotic public press:-- The use of Hyperion or Labrador tea is every day coming into vogue among people of all ranks. The virtues of the plant or shrub from which this delicate Tea is gathered were first discovered by the Aborigines, and from them the Canadians learned them. Before the cession of Canada to Great Britain we knew little or nothing of this most excellent herb, but since we have been taught to find it growing all over hill and dale between the Lat. 40 and 60. It is found all over New England in great plenty and that of best quality, particularly on the banks of the Penobscot, Kennebec, Nichewannock and Merrimac. CHAPTER XI. A REVOLUTIONARY HOUSEWIFE. We do not need to make a composite picture of the housewife of Revolutionary days, for a very distinct account has been preserved of one in the quaint pages of the _Remembrancer_ or diary of Christopher Marshall, a well-to-do Quaker of Philadelphia, who was one of the Committee of Observation of that city during the Revolutionary War. After many entries through the year 1778, which incidentally show the many cares of his faithful wife, and her fulfilment of these cares, the fortunate husband thus bursts forth in her praise:--