HAVING NO DESIRE to be either palsied, or paralytical, Daniel avoided the stuff until 1670, when he got his first taste of it at Mrs. Green's Coffee-House, cunningly sited in the place where the western end of the Strand yawned into Charing Cross. The Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields lay to the west. * To the east was the New Exchange – this was the nucleus of a whole block of shops. North was Covent Garden, and South, according to rumor and tradition, was the River Thames, a few hundred yards distant – but you couldn't see it because noble Houses and Palaces formed a solid levee running from the King's residence (Whitehall Palace) all the way round the river-bend to Fleet Ditch, where the wharves began.