But the coffee-houses were not all for beer and skittles only. In the City especially, the business of the City, and of England, in fact, was transacted in them. Merchants and other business people, professional men, brokers, agents, had not then their private offices, which could only be reached through the ante-den of quill-driving _cerberi, milgo_ clerks. All the transactions of daily life were then largely carried on in public, as they are in all communities, until they arrive at a high state of civilization. Even now among the peasantry of various European countries a man cannot have his child christened without the ceremony being rendered a public spectacle. And so here in England, in the barbarous days of dingy and musty coffee-houses, they were consulting-rooms, offices, counting-houses, auction-rooms, and shops. When the business was done, or in order to further it, refreshments of all sorts were handy, for the coffee-house did not confine itself to that innocent beverage, but supplied stronger stuffs; it was, in fact, a tavern, and many of the houses, now openly so called, were formerly coffee-houses. And the business transacted at them was, as may be imagined, of the most varied character. Agents for the purchase or sale of estates, houses and other property, instead of seeing people at their offices, met them at coffee-houses. Thus one Thomas Rogers advertised that he gave attendance daily at the Rainbow by the Temple; on Tuesdays at Tom’s, by the Exchange, and on Thursdays at Will’s, near Whitehall, for transacting agency business. This was legitimate enough, but what of the sale of human flesh at a coffee-house? In 1708 an advertisement appeared: ’A black boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis’s Coffee-house, in Finch-lane.’ And again, in 1728: ’To be sold, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Enquire at the Virginia Coffee-house, Threadneedle-street.’ Sometimes the keeper of the coffee-house sold goods on account of others; thus from an advertisement in the _Postman_, January, 1705, we learn that Mr. Shipton, at John’s Coffee-house, in Exchange Alley, sold someone’s famous razor strops. The landlords of those places, indeed, seem to have been very accommodating, especially in the taking in of letters, thus anticipating the practice of modern newspaper shops. And they were not squeamish as to the advertisements, answers to which were to be sent to them. Thus a gentleman (?) in the _General Advertiser_, October, 1745, expressed a wish to hear from a lady he had seen in one of the left-hand boxes at Drury Lane, and who seemed to take particular notice of a gentleman who sat about the middle of the pit (the advertiser, of course). Letter to be left for ’P.M.F.’, at the Portugal Coffee-house, near the Exchange. In 1762 a young man advertised for his mother, ’who, in 1740, resided at a certain village near Bath, where she was delivered