The numerous songs of the day, and the incomparable plates by Hogarth, will sufficiently show the folly and vice of those drinking times, when the courtier, after attending the drawing-room of St. James's, would walk in his full dress, with bag and sword, from the palace, to the diabolical coffee-room of Moll King, in Covent Garden, where he would mix, sit, and converse with every description of character. Moll King's was the house now the sign of the Green Man, and was a mere hovel, so destitute of accommodation that the principal chamber of vice was immediately over the coffee room, and could only be ascended by a drop ladder. Saloop, the subject of this etching, has superseded almost every other midnight street refreshment, being a beverage easily made, and a long time considered as a sovereign cure for head-ache arising from drunkenness. But no person, unless he has walked through the streets from the hour of twelve, can duly paint the scenes of the saloop stall with its variety of customers. Whoever may be desirous of tasting saloop in the highest perfection, may be gratified at Reid's Coffee House,[16] No. 102, Fleet Street, which was the first respectable house where it was to be had, and established in the year 1719. The following lines are painted on a board, and suspended in the coffee room: "Come all degrees now passing by, My charming liquor taste and try; To Lockyer[17] come, and drink your fill; Mount Pleasant[18] has no kind of ill. The fumes of wine, punch, drams, and beer, It will expell; your spirits cheer; From drowsiness your spirits free. Sweet as a rose your breath shall be. Come taste and try, and speak your mind; Such rare ingredients here are joined, Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind." The following extract respecting saloop, is taken from p. 38 of "Flora Diætetica, or History of Esculent Plants," by Charles Bryant, of Norwich, 1783. "Orchis Mascula. This is very common in our woods, meadows, and pastures, and the powdered roots of it are said to be the saloop which is sold in the shops; but the shop roots come from Turkey. "The flowers of most of the plants of this genus are indiscriminately called cuckoo-flowers by the country people. Though it has been affirmed that saloop is the root of the mascula only, yet those of the morio, and of some other species of orchis, will do equally as well, as I can affirm from my own experience; consequently, to give a description of the mascula in particular will be useless. As most country people are acquainted with these plants by the name of cuckoo-flowers, it certainly would be worth their while to employ their children to collect the roots for sale; and though they may not be quite so large as those that come from abroad, yet they may be equally as good, and as they are exceedingly plentiful, enough might annually be gathered for our own consumption, and thus a new article of employment would be added to the poorer sort of people.