followed. Among the early dispensors of these harmless hot drinks
was Thomas Garway, or as written later, Garraway, whose four-
story brick coffee-house on Exchange Alley, first opened in 1659,
had been a rallying point for Londoners for 216 years, when it
was pulled down to make room for other structures, in 1873.
Garraway left a monument that has outlasted his coffee-house, in
the form of a famous tea circular.

Garway's Famous Circular is so often quoted and mutilated that we
print it here in full; it has no date, but it is supposed to have
been printed in 1660:

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AN EXACT DESCRIPTION OF THE GROWTH, QUALITY AND VIRTUES
OF THE TEA LEAF, by Thomas Garway, in Exchange Alley,
near the Royal Exchange, in London, Tobacconist, and
Seller and Retailer of Tea and Coffee.

"Tea is generally brought from China, and groweth there
upon little shrubs and bushes, the branches whereof are
well garnished with white flowers, that are yellow
within, of the bigness and fashion of sweet-brier, but
in smell unlike, bearing thin green leaves, about the
brightness of Scordium, Myrtle or Sumack. This plant has
been reported to grow wild only, but doth not: for they
plant it in their gardens about four foot distance and
it groweth about four foot high, and of the seeds they
maintain and increase their stock. Of all places in
China this plant groweth in greatest plenty in the