Chapter V: Prohibition (1)

“Rugged or not, there is no other way.”—_Luther._

The champions of temperance have to contend with two chief adversaries—ignorance and organized crime. The well-organized liquor league can boast of leaders whose want of principles is not extenuated by want of information, and who deliberately scheme to coin the misery of their fellowmen into dollars and cents. But the machinations of such enemies of mankind would not have availed them against the power of public opinion, if their cunning had not found a potent ally in the ignorance, not of their victims only, but of their passive opponents. We need the moral and intellectual support of a larger class of our fellow-citizens, before we can hope to secure the effectual aid of legal remedies, and in that direction the chief obstacles to the progress of our cause have been the prevailing misconceptions on the following points:

1. COMPETENCE OF LEGISLATIVE POWER.—There can be no doubt that the legislative authority even of civilized governments has been frequently misapplied. The most competent exponents of political economy agree that the state has no business to meddle in such affairs as the fluctuation of market prices, the rate of interest, the freedom of international traffic. On more than one occasion European governments, having attempted to regulate the price of bread-stuffs, etc., were taught the folly of such interference by commercial dead-locks and the impossibility of procuring the necessaries of life at the prescribed price, and were thus compelled to remedy the mischief by repealing their enactments. Usury laws tend to increase, instead of decreasing, the rate of interest, by obliging the usurer to indemnify himself for the disadvantage of the additional risk. The attempt to increase national revenues by enforcing an artificial balance of trade has ever defeated its own object. It is almost equally certain that compulsory charities do on the whole more harm than good. On the other hand, there are no more undoubtedly legitimate functions of government than the suppression, and the, if possible, prevention, of crime, and the enforcement of health laws; and it can be demonstrated by every rule of logic and equity that the liquor traffic can be held amenable in both respects. The favorite argument of our opponents is the distinction of crime and vice. For the latter, they tell us, society has no remedy, except in as much as the natural consequences (disease, destitution, etc.) are apt to recoil on the person of the perpetrator; the evil of intemperance therefore is beyond the reach of the law. We may fully concede the premises without admitting the cogency of the conclusion. The suspected possession or private use of intoxicating liquors would hardly justify the issue of a search warrant, but the penalties of the law can with full justice be directed against the manufacturer or vender who seeks gain by tempting his fellowmen to indulge in a poison infallibly injurious in any quantity, and infallibly tending to the development of a body and soul corrupting habit; they may with equal justice be directed against the consumer, stupefied or brutalized by the effects of that poison. The rumseller has no right to plead the consent of his victim. The absence of violence or “malice prepense,”[1] is a plea that would legalize some of the worst offenses against society. The peddler of obscene literature poisons the souls of our children without a shadow of ill-will against his individual customer. The gambler, the lottery-shark, use no manner of force in the pursuit of their prey. By what logic can we justify the interdiction of their industry and condemn that of the liquor traffic? By the criterion of comparative harmlessness? Have all the indecencies published since the invention of printing occasioned the thousandth part of the misery caused by the yearly and inevitable consequences of the poison vice? The lottery player may lose or win, but the customer of the liquor vender is doomed to loss as soon as he approaches the dram-shop. The damage sustained by the habitual player may be confined to a loss of money, while the habitual drunkard is sure to suffer in health, character and reputation, as well as in purse. And shall we condone the conduct of the befuddled drunkard on account of a temporary suspense of conscious reason? That very _dementation_ constitutes his offense.

His actions may or may not result in actual mischief, but he has put the decision of that event beyond his control. The man who gallops headlong through crowded streets is punished for his reckless disregard of other men’s safety, though the hoofs of his horse may have failed to inflict any actual injury. A menagerie keeper would be arrested, if not lynched, for turning a city into a pandemonium by letting loose his bears and hyenas, and for the same reason no man should be permitted to turn himself into a wild beast.

“Virtue must come from within,” says Prof. Newman;[2] “to this problem religion and morality must direct themselves. But vice may come from without; to _hinder_ this is the care of the statesman.” And here, as elsewhere, prevention is better than cure. By obviating the temptations of the dram-shop a progressive vice with an incalculable train of mischievous consequences may be nipped in the bud. Penal legislation is a sham if it takes cognizance of moral evils only after they have passed the curable stage. “It is mere mockery,” says Cardinal Manning,[3] “to ask us to put down drunkenness by moral and religious means, when the legislature facilitates the multiplication of the incitements to intemperance on every side. You might as well call upon me as a captain of a ship and say: ‘Why don’t you pump the water out when it is sinking,’ when you are scuttling the ship in every direction. If you will cut off the supply of temptation, I will be bound by the help of God to convert drunkards, but until you have taken off this perpetual supply of intoxicating drink we never can cultivate the fields. Let the legislature do its part and we will answer for the rest.”

All civilized nations have recognized not only the right but the duty of legislative authorities to adopt the most stringent measures for the prevention of contagious disease; yet all epidemics taken together have not caused half as much loss of life and health as the plague of the poison vice.

2. MAGNITUDE OF THE EVIL.—Since health and freedom began to be recognized as the primary conditions of human welfare, the conviction is gaining ground that the principles of our legislative system need a general revision. It was a step in the right direction when the lawgivers of the Middle Ages began to realize the truth that the liberty of individual action should be sacrificed only to urgent consideration of public welfare, but the modified theories on the comparative importance of these considerations have inaugurated a still more important reform. Penal codes gradually ceased to enforce ceremonies and abstruse dogmas and to ignore monstrous municipal and sanitary abuses. The time has passed when legislators raged with extreme penalties against the propagandists of speculative theories and ignored the propagation of slum diseases, yet, after all, there is still a lingering belief in the minds of many contemporaries that intemperance, as a physical evil, a “mere dietetic excess,” does not justify the invasion of personal liberty. They would consent to restrict the freedom of thought and speech rather than the license of the rum-dealer, yet the tendency of a progressive advance in public opinion promises the advent of a time when that license will appear the chief anomaly of the present age. The numberless minute prescriptions and interdicts of our law books and their silence on the crime of the liquor traffic will make it difficult for coming ages to comprehend the intellectual status of a generation that could wage such uncompromising war against microscopic gnats and consent to gratify the greed of a monstrous vampire.

3. SELF-CORRECTING ABUSES.—Modern physicians admit that various forms of disease which were formerly treated with drastic drugs can be safely trusted to the healing agencies of nature. Many social evils, too, tend to work out their own cure. High markets encourage competition and have led to a reduction of prices. Luxury leads to enforced economy by reducing the resources of the spendthrift. Dishonest tradesmen lose custom, and a German government that used to fine editors for publishing unverified rumors might have left it to the subscribers to withdraw their patronage from a purveyor of unreliable news. But there are certain causes of disease that demand the interference of art. _Poisons_, especially, require artificial antidotes. If a child has mistaken arsenic for sugar, its life commonly depends on the timely arrival of a physician. The organism may rid itself of a surfeit, but is unable to eliminate the virus of a skin disease. Alcoholism belongs to the same class of disorders. We need not legislate against corsets; the absurdities of fashion change and vanish like fleeting clouds, and their votaries may welcome the change; but drunkards would remain slaves of their vice though the verdict of public opinion should have made dram-drinking extremely unfashionable. The morbid passion transmitted from sire to son, and strengthened by years of indulgence, would defy all moral restraints and yield only to the practical impossibility to obtain the object of its desire.

“A number of years ago,” says Dr. Isaac Jennings, “I was called to the shipyard in Derby, to see John B., a man about thirty years of age, of naturally stout, robust constitution, who had fallen from a scaffold in a fit, head first upon a spike below. In my visit to dress the wounded head, I spoke to him of the folly and danger of continuing to indulge his habit of drinking, and obtained from him a promise that he would abandon it. Not long after I learned that he was drinking again, and reminded him of his promise. His excuse was, that it would not do for him to abandon the practice of drinking suddenly. A few weeks after this he called at my office and requested me to bleed him, or do something to prevent a fit, for he felt much as he did a short time before having the last fit. I said to him, ‘John, sit down here with me and let us consider your case a little.’ I drew two pictures and held before him; one presented a wife and three little children with a circle of friends made happy and himself respectable and useful in society; the other, a wretched family, and himself mouldering in a drunkard’s grave; and appealed to him to decide which should prove to be the true picture. The poor fellow burst into tears and wept like a child. When he had recovered himself from sobbing so that he could speak he said: ‘Doctor, to tell you the truth, it is not that I am afraid of the consequences of stopping suddenly that I do not give up drinking. _I can not do it._ I have tried and tried again, but it is all in vain. Sometimes I have gone a number of weeks without drinking, and I flattered myself that the temptation was gone, but it returned, and now if there was a spot on earth where men lived and could not get spirits, and I could get there, I would start in a minute.’ I thought I had understood something of the difficulties of hard drinkers before, but this gave me a new impression of the matter, and most solemnly did I charge myself to do what I could to _make a spot on earth where men could live and couldn’t get spirits_.”

4. LESSER EVILS.—Even in a stricter form than any rational friend of temperance would desire its enforcement, prohibition would not involve any consequences that could possibly make the cure a greater evil than the disease. The predicted aching void resulting from the expurgation of beer-tunnels could be filled by healthier means of recreation. The grief of the superseded poison-mongers would not outweigh the mountain-load of misery and woe which the abolishment of their cursed trade would lift from the shoulders of the nation. When the state of Iowa declared for prohibition the opponents of that amendment bemoaned the loss entailed by the departure of “so many industrious and respectable citizens,” _i. e._, from the exodus of the rumsellers! We might just as well be asked to bewail the doom of the Thugs[4] as the subversion of a prosperous industry. We might as well be requested to sympathize with the respectable bloodhound-trainers and knout-manufacturers whom the abolition of slavery threw out of employment. The liquor dealer has no right to complain about the rigor of a law that permits him to depart with the spoils of such a trade. We are told that the mere rumor of Maine laws has deterred many foreigners from making their homes with us; that the Russian peasants decline to come without their brewers and distillers, and that by general prohibition we would risk to reduce our immigration from every country of northern Europe. We must take that risk, and let Muscovites rot in the bogs of the Volga if they can not accept our hospitality without turning our bread corn into poison. Our utilitarian friends would hardly persuade us to legalize cannibalism in order to encourage a larger immigration of Fiji islanders. The absence of such guests might not prove an unqualified evil. I shall not insult the intelligence of my readers by repeating the drivel of the wretches who would weigh the reduction of revenues against the happiness of a hell-delivered nation, and I will only mention the reply of a British financier who estimates that the increase of national prosperity would offset that reduction _in less than five years_.

5. EFFICACY OF PROHIBITION.—Will prohibition prevent the use of intoxicating liquor? Not wholly, but it will answer its purpose. It will banish distilleries to secret mountain glens and hidden cellars. It will drive the man-traps of the poison-monger from the public streets. It will save our boys from a hundred temptations; it will help thousands of reformed drunkards to keep their pledge; it will restore peace and plenty to many hundred thousand homes. More than a century ago the philosopher Leibnitz[5] maintained that the plenary suppression of the liquor traffic would be the most effectual means for reforming the moral status of civilized nations, and experience has since fully demonstrated the correctness of that opinion. A memorandum endorsed by a large number of statistical vouchers describes the effect of prohibition in Sweden: “The nation rose and fell, grew prosperous and happy, or miserable and degraded, as its rulers and law-makers restrained or permitted the manufacture and sale of that which all along the track of its history has seemed to be the nation’s greatest curse.” … “The vigorously maintained prohibition against spirits in 1753-1756, and again in 1772-1775, proved the enormous benefits effected in moral, economical, and other respects, by abstinence from intoxicating spirits.” … “This it is which has so helped Sweden to emerge from moral and material prostration, and explains the existence of such general indications in that country of comfort and independence among all classes.”

From the Edinburgh _Review_ for January, 1873, we learn that in eighty-nine private estates in England and Scotland, “the drink traffic has been altogether suppressed, with the happiest social results. The late Lord Palmerston[6] suppressed the beer shops in Romsey as the leases fell in. We know an estate which stretches for miles along the romantic shore of Loch Fyne,[7] where no whiskey is allowed to be sold. The peasants and fishermen are flourishing. They have all their money in the bank, and they obtain higher wages than their neighbors when they go to sea”—a proof that a small oasis of temperance can maintain its prosperity in the midst of poison-blighted communities.

Here and there the wiles of the poison-mongers will undoubtedly succeed in evading the law, but their power for mischief will be diminished as that of the gambling-hell was diminished in Homburg and Baden,[8] where temptation was removed out of the track of the uninitiated till the host of victims dwindled away for want of recruits. Not the promptings of an innate passion, but the charm of artificial allurements is the gate by which ninety-nine out of a hundred drunkards have entered the road to ruin. It would be an understatement to say that the temptation of minors will be reduced a hundred fold wherever the total amount of sales has been reduced as much as five fold—a result which has been far exceeded, even under the present imperfect system of legal control. “In the course of my duty as an Internal Revenue officer,” says Superintendent Hamlin of Bangor, “I have become thoroughly acquainted with the state and extent of the liquor traffic in Maine, and I have no hesitation in saying that the beer trade is not more than one per cent. of what I remember it to have been, and the trade in distilled liquors is not more than ten per cent. of what it was formerly.” “I think I am justified in saying,” reports the Attorney-General, “that there is not an open bar for the sale of intoxicating liquor in this county” (Androscoggin, including the manufacturing district of Lewiston—once a very hotbed of the rum traffic). “In the city of Biddeford, a manufacturing place of 11,000 inhabitants, for a month at a time not a single arrest for drunkenness has been made or become necessary.” And from Augusta (the capital of the state): “If we were to say that the quantity of liquor sold here is not one-tenth as large as formerly, we think it would be within the truth; and the favorable effects of the change upon all the interests of the state are plainly seen everywhere.”

“It is perhaps not necessary,” says the Boston _Globe_, of July 29, 1875, “to dwell on the evils of intemperance, and yet people seldom think how great a proportion of these might be prevented by driving the iniquity into its hiding places, and preventing it from coming forth to lure its victims from among the unwary and comparatively guileless. Few young men who are worth saving, or are likely to be saved to decency and virtue, would seek it out if it were kept from sight. But when it comes forth in gay and alluring colors, it draws a procession of our youth into a path that has an awful termination. Nor does the evil which springs from an open toleration of the way in which this vice carries on its traffic of destruction fall only on men. A sad proportion of its victims is made up from shop girls and abandoned women who are not so infatuated at the start that they would plunge into a life of infamy if its temptations were strictly under the ban, and kept widely separated from the world of decency. But it intruded itself upon them. Its temptations and opportunities are before their eyes, and the way is made easy for their feet to go down to death.”

“To what good is it,” says Lord Brougham,[9] “that the legislature should pass laws to punish crime, or that their lordships should occupy themselves in trying to improve the morals of the people by giving them education? What could be the use of sowing a little seed here and plucking up a weed there, if these beer shops are to be continued to sow the seeds of immorality broadcast over the land, germinating the most frightful produce that ever has been allowed to grow up in a civilized country, and, I am ashamed to add, under the fostering care of Parliament.”

The prohibition of the poison traffic has become the urgent duty of every legislator, the foremost aim of every moral reformer. The verdict of the most eminent statesmen, physicians, clergymen, patriots and philanthropists, is unanimous on that point. We lack energy, not competence, nor the sanction of a higher authority, to gain the votes of the masses.

“We can prove the success of prohibition by the experience of our neighboring state,” writes Dr. Herbert Buchanan, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire; “all the vicious elements of society are arraigned against us, _but I have no fear of the event if we do not cease to agitate the subject_.”

Agitation, a ceaseless appeal to the common sense and conscience of our fellowmen can, indeed, not fail to be crowned with ultimate success. The struggle with vice, with ignorance and mean selfishness may continue, but it will be our own fault if our adversaries can support their opposition by a single valid argument, and the battle will be more than half won if a majority of our fellow-citizens have to admit that we contend no longer for a favor, but for an evident right.

STUDIES IN KITCHEN SCIENCE AND ART.

V. TEA, COFFEE, AND CHOCOLATE.

BY BYRON D. HALSTED, SC. D.

We have here to consider the sources of the three leading dietetic beverages. They are very unlike in general appearance, but all possess the same vegetable principle, called an alkaloid,[1] though known under different names. Thus modern chemistry has proved the identity of the theine of the tea, the caffeine[2] of the coffee and the theo-bromine[3] of the chocolate. This same vegetable alkaloid, remarkable for its large per cent. of nitrogen, is found in small quantities in a few other plants, most of which have been used to some extent for the making of an exhilarating drink. It answers our purpose best to treat each of our three subjects under its respective head.

TEA (_Thea viridis_[4]).—The tea of commerce is the prepared leaves of a shrub belonging to the order Camelliaceæ[5] represented in the United States by loblolly bay[6] and Stuartia.[7] Perhaps the most familiar near relative of the tea plant is the camellia of our green houses and window gardens. The wild tea shrub grows from twenty to thirty feet high, and is found native in China and Japan. When under cultivation the shrub is pruned so as to not exceed six feet in height. The flowers are large, white and fragrant; they are produced in clusters in the axils of the simple, oblong, evergreen, serrate leaves. China and Japan are among the leading tea-growing countries, its cultivation being chiefly confined between twenty-five and thirty-five north latitude. Tea was in general use in China in the ninth century, but it was not until the seventeenth century that it was introduced into Europe. About the middle of this century the East India Company imported tea into England, since which time it has become the regular beverage of many millions of people in all parts of the world. The importations of tea into the United States for the year ending June 30th, 1884, were 67,665,910 pounds. It will be seen that this gives somewhere near a pound and a quarter of tea for each man, woman and child in this country. Most of our China tea trade is carried on with Shanghai, Foo Chow and Amoy.

In China the tea shrub is grown chiefly on the southern slopes of hills in poor, well watered soil, to which manure is applied. The seeds are dropped in holes at regular intervals, and during the third year the first crop is obtained. In from seven to ten years the shrubs are cut down and shoots spring up from the stumps, which continue to yield crops of leaves. A single plant produces on an average between three hundred and three hundred and fifty pounds of dried leaves. The leaves are picked three times a year, in April, May, and June or July. The young, tender leaves of the first gathering make the best tea, and this is very largely consumed in its native country. The older leaves of the second and third pickings make a poorer quality of tea which abounds in tannin,[8] and contains but a small per cent. of the best elements of superior tea. It was long supposed that black and green sorts of tea were made from distinct varieties, or even species of plants; in fact, there has been a great deal of mystery surrounding the culture and preparation of tea until within the past score of years. Authorities now state that there is only one species of plant yielding tea leaves, and from this all sorts are made. The differences are natural, being some of them due to climate and conditions of soil, etc., while others are the result of the manipulation of the leaves after they are gathered. Black and green tea may come from the same shrub, or even the same branch of a plant. The leaves forming black tea undergo a fermentation before they are dried, while those designed for green tea are at once submitted to a high heat in iron pans, and not copper pans, as generally supposed. After the leaves for black tea have been gathered they are placed in heaps, when they become flaccid and turn dark from incipient fermentation. The leaves are then rolled between the thumb and fingers or upon bamboo tables until the desired twist is obtained. They next pass to a drying room and are heated in an iron pan; again twisted, and afterward dried over a slow fire. The principal difference between the preparation of black and green tea is that in the latter the freshly gathered leaves go at once into the heated pans. The repeated twisting and heating is nearly the same with both classes. The green teas are sometimes artificially colored by using turmeric[9] with gypsum or Prussian blue. A flavor is frequently given to the tea by adding aromatic flowers, as those of the pekoe and caper.[10] Among the leading varieties of black tea are: Bohea, a small leaf, crisp and strong odor, with brackish taste; two sorts of Congous—the large leaf with fine flavor, and the small leaf with a burnt smell. The Souchong is the much prized “English Breakfast,” made from leaves of three-year-old trees. Only a small part of the so-called Souchong is genuine. Pekoe is made from the tenderest leaves gathered from three-year-old plants while in bloom. Oolongs are common kinds of black teas, much used for mixing with other sorts. Of the green teas the Gunpowder is round, like shot, with green color and fragrant taste. The Imperial is more loosely rolled than the Gunpowder. Young Hyson is in loose rolls, which easily crumble to the touch; it gives a light green infusion. Old Hyson is the older leaves in the picking for Young Hyson. Twankay consists of mixed and broken leaves, and is of inferior quality. Japan teas are both colored and uncolored, and come from Japan; they are very largely consumed in this country.

The chemical composition of a fair sample of tea is; Theine, 1. to 3. per cent.; caseine,[11] 15.; gum, 18.; sugar, .3; tannin, 26.; aromatic oil, .75; fat, 4.; vegetable fiber, 20.; mineral substances, 5.; and water, 5. per cent.

The tannin is an astringent, while the theine acts as a gentle excitant upon the nervous system. This is probably enhanced by the warmth of the infusion. The best authorities agree that tea is a valuable article of diet for healthy, grown people. It however is not suitable for children until growth is completed. Adults with irritable constitutions may be injured by tea-drinking. Tea is the solace of old age. Cibber[12] wrote: “Tea! thou soft, thou sober, sage and venerable liquid … thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink-tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moments of my life, let me fall prostrate.” Waller[13] truthfully says:

“Tea doth our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors which the head invade
And keep the palace of the soul.”

Tea is extensively adulterated in many ways. In China exhausted tea leaves and foliage of other trees are employed by millions of pounds each year. Willow leaves are among the principal ones used for mixing with tea. A British consul once related that at Shanghai there were at one time 53,000 pounds of willow leaves in preparation to be sold as tea. Mineral matters are used to color or “face” the tea. “The common test,” states Mr. Felker, in his work “What the Grocers Sell Us,” “is by infusion; this is poured off the leaves and examined for color, taste, and odor, all of which are characteristic.… Impurities like sand, iron filings and dirt may be seen among the leaves or at the bottom of the cups. The leaves, too, betray by their coarseness and botanical character, the nature and quality of the tea, for although the leaves of the genuine tea differ much in form and size, yet their venation and general structure are very distinctive.… ‘Lie tea,’ used to adulterate Gunpowder tea, consists of tea dust mixed with mineral substances, starch and gum, and then formed into little masses resembling tea.” Large tea houses employ professional tea tasters who make steepings and judge upon the flavor, purity, etc.

COFFEE.—The coffee of commerce is the seed of a shrub, _Coffea Arabica_,[14] belonging to the order Rubiaceæ,[15] which is represented in the United States by the charming little “bluets” of our pastures in spring. The cape jessamine and bouvardias[16] of the green house are near relatives of the coffee plant. The name coffee is probably derived from the Arabic word _Kahwah_, although some authorities contend that it is traced to Caffa, a province of Abyssinia, where the coffee plant flourishes in the wild state. The coffee shrub is an evergreen, growing to the height of twenty feet, with long, smooth, shining leaves. The pure white flowers are produced in clusters in the axils of the leaves and followed by fleshy berries which, when ripe, resemble small, dark red cherries. Each berry usually contains two seeds embedded in the yellowish pulp. These seeds, when separated from the pulp and papery covering, form the raw coffee of the stores. Each seed—improperly called a berry—is somewhat hemispherical, with a groove running through the middle of the flat side. Sometimes one seed is abortive in the berry, and the other becomes round, as in the Wynaad coffee from India, sometimes called “male berry” coffee.

Coffee is cultivated in many countries lying between fifteen north and fifteen south latitude. It may be successfully grown thirty degrees from the equator. Like the tea plant, the coffee shrub favors the well watered mountain slopes. The trees are set in long, straight rows, six feet apart, and six feet from each other in the row. The coffee tree is naturally a plant with long, straggling shoots, but under cultivation it is pruned to make a shrub not exceeding six feet in height, with long, lateral branches. A full crop should be obtained the third year. The berries are gathered when the pulp begins to shrivel, and are at once taken to the store-house, where they are pulped. The berries are passed between large, rough rollers, which remove the pulp, but not the parchment-like covering of the seeds. The berries with the pulp removed are heaped up, covered with old sacking, and allowed to ferment for two days. Water is turned on and all glutinous matter removed. The seeds are spread out to dry, after which they are passed between wooden cylinders that remove the thin, dry covering. The coffee seeds, after being winnowed, are assorted into various sizes and packed ready for shipment. A thrifty shrub yields two pounds of marketable coffee. The raw coffee seed has a horny texture, without the peculiar aroma characteristic of the roasted berry.

The early history of coffee is obscure. It has been in use for over a thousand years. The knowledge of its use was first brought into Arabia from Abyssinia in the fifteenth century. “Its peculiar property of dissipating drowsiness and preventing sleep was taken advantage of in connection with the prolonged religious services of the Mohametans, and its use as a devotional antisoporific stirred up a fierce opposition on the part of the priests. Coffee was by them held to be an intoxicant beverage, and therefore prohibited by the Koran;[17] and the dreadful penalties of an outraged sacred law were laid over the heads of all who became addicted to its use. Notwithstanding the threats of divine retribution, and though all manner of devices were adopted to check its growth, the coffee-drinking habit spread rapidly among the Arabians, Mohametans, and the growth of coffee as well as its use as a national beverage became as inseparably associated with Arabia as tea is with China.” Coffee reached Great Britain in the seventeenth century. Charles II. attempted to suppress coffee houses by proclamation, because they “devised and spread abroad divers false, malicious and scandalous reports to the defamation of his Majesty’s government and to the peace and quiet of the nation.” How different is this view from that held by those interested in good government, peace and prosperity at the present day! We now rejoice in the establishment of coffee houses, hoping that they may supplant the much dreaded rum shops.

It is worthy of note here that the three dietetic beverages treated in this article were all introduced into Europe at nearly the same time. Tea came through the Dutch; cocoa was brought from South America to Spain, and coffee came from Arabia by the way of Constantinople.

Coffee was for some time supplied only by Arabia, but near the beginning of the eighteenth century its culture was introduced into Java and the West India islands. At the present day its culture is general within the tropics, Brazil leading the list in amount annually produced. In the Eastern hemisphere the principal coffee regions are Java and Ceylon, where a superior article is produced. The amount of coffee imported into the United States during the year ending June 30th, 1884, was 534,785,542 pounds, and 18,907,627 pounds in excess of the previous year. It is seen that these figures give nearly ten pounds for each individual in this vast country. This amount per capita is exceeded by only a few countries. Holland leads all European states, with an average of twenty-one pounds per head, followed closely by Belgium, Denmark and Norway.

The dietetic value of coffee depends principally upon the alkaloid caffeine or theine which it contains in common with tea and cocoa or chocolate. Good coffee contains nearly one per cent. of this substance. When obtained in a pure state it crystallizes in slender needles. The peculiar aroma of coffee is due to the presence of caffeone,[18] which develops in the process of roasting. It may be isolated as a brown oil, heavier than water, by distilling roasted coffee with water. The roasting of coffee is an operation requiring much good judgment, for by carrying the process beyond a certain point the aroma is destroyed and a disagreeable flavor is produced.

Roasted coffee when ground quickly deteriorates unless kept in close vessels. Mocha coffee, which is brought from Arabia, is the best, and that from Java ranks next. Much of the so-called Mocha coffee is raised in Brazil, or elsewhere, and shipped to Arabia, after which it finds its way into the markets. The berries of the true Mocha coffee are small, dark and yellow; those of Java are a paler yellow, while the West India and Brazilian coffees have a greenish-gray tint. The last named coffee is usually sold under the name of Rio, an abbreviation of the leading coffee exporting port of Brazil, namely, Rio de Janeiro; Martinique and St. Domingo coffees are two other kinds but little known.

Coffee is principally valuable for its stimulating effects upon the system. It produces a buoyancy of feeling, lightens the sensation of fatigue, and sustains the muscles when under prolonged exertion. A cup of rich, hot coffee seems to infuse new life into an o’er-tired body. Equally with tea it is “the cup that cheers, but not inebriates.”

“Coffee which makes the politician wise
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.”

Coffee is the subject of many adulterations, usually when sold in the ground state. Several kinds of seeds resembling coffee in size have been employed to adulterate the whole coffee, some of which need to be colored before they will pass for the genuine. Many kinds of roots are sliced, dried and roasted for the adulteration of coffee, among the leading ones of which are chicory, carrot and the beet. Spent tanbark and even dried beef’s liver have been thus employed. Many of these fraudulent additions can be detected with the microscope. Ground coffee floats on water, while most of the adulterations will sink or discolor the water. There is said to be a machine in England for making false berries out of vegetable substance.

CHOCOLATE.—The chocolate of the shops is derived from a small evergreen tree, native of South America, Mexico, and West Indias. This tree, _Theobroma cacao_, has large, pointed leaves and rose-colored flowers, which are followed by fruit pods six to ten inches long. The first part of the botanical name is from the Greek meaning “food for the gods,” and the second or specific word _cacao_ is the old Mexican name for the tree. The order Sterculiaceæ[19] to which the theobroma or chocolate tree belongs is not represented in our flora. It however is known to many by a species of Mahernia[20] from the cape of Good Hope, cultivated in conservatories. The order contains about 520 species, nearly all of which are tropical. The long pods, while green, resemble cucumbers, and when ripe contain from thirty to an hundred seeds, arranged in rows, and of the size of sweet almonds. During the season of ripening the pods are gathered daily, laid in heaps until they have fermented, when they are opened by hand and the seeds spread in the sun to dry, after which they are ready for market. Before the Spaniards visited Mexico the natives made a beverage from the seeds, which they called _chocalat_, and from this we derived our word chocolate. The Spaniards have the credit of introducing this beverage into Europe. In the manufacture of chocolate the _cocoa_ (which is a corruption of the original Mexican _cacao_) beans are roasted similar to the roasting of coffee, and after the husk is removed they are reduced to a paste. This paste is afterward mixed with equal quantities of sugar and heated and turned into cakes of various shapes familiar to all housekeepers. Cacao nibs are the bruised and broken seeds, and cocoa shells are the thin coverings of the seeds or beans which are separated before the seeds are ground to powder. Broma is chocolate prepared for the market in a certain way, and is a trade name.

The importations of chocolate for the year ending June 30th were 12,235,304 pounds, being an increase of nearly thirty-five per cent. over the previous year.

Of the three leading beverages herein briefly described tea is the only one that has been grown as a crop in the United States. In a reply to an inquiry recently addressed to the Commissioner of Agriculture, it was stated that the tea plant is hardy at Washington, D. C., and that the tea plantations near Summerville, South Carolina, are doing well. “There is no trouble about growing the plant, but the question of profitable culture for the manufacture of tea is quite another thing.… The purpose of the Department of Agriculture … is to cheapen the present methods or possibly suggest the placing of the teas on the market in a wholly different shape from what is done at present.” We may be able to supply our own demands for tea, but it is not likely that the same will be true of coffee and chocolate.

HOUSEHOLD BEVERAGES.

At the breakfast table of a friend not long ago I heard the gentleman of the house remark over his fragrant coffee:

“I laughed at my wife when she went into the cooking school last summer, I thought her a model cook before; but for some reason she has improved. I never tasted such coffee as this.”

My hostess answered: “The reason is simple enough. I had always cooked by rule before. I learned in my studies in cookery to reason. It makes a great difference.”

It does make a difference, and never a greater than in preparing tea, coffee and chocolate. There is rarely a cup of any one of these beverages on our tables which is fit to drink; our coffee is bitter and muddy, tea is either insipid or too strong, and chocolate has failed to become the popular drink which it deserves to be, because so rarely well prepared.

Few cooks understand the nature of either the coffee berry or the tea leaf, and consequently do not know how to treat them in order to extract their delicious flavor, aroma, and nerve-bracing qualities.

Few cooks have an idea of the extreme delicacy of these articles, of how scientifically, even artistically, they must be treated. To extract an oil or flavor is one of the nicest experiments of the laboratory, and one for which a chemist selects his materials with the greatest care, attends strictly to the cleanliness of his vessels, watches every change in temperature, and counts even seconds in time. Making these beverages is nothing less than performing a delicate chemical experiment, and yet we are so ignorant or careless about this important work that we attend strictly to neither heat nor time, and often take just what we can most easily get to work with.

If you would have good tea, coffee and chocolate begin your care with your buying. Tea is a most troublesome article to purchase. There are so many varieties on the market, and so much adulteration that the probability is that unless you are taking extreme precautions you are getting an inferior article. Adulteration is astonishingly common, poor teas being manipulated to make them appear like the first-class grades; inferior black teas colored to look like high-priced green teas, “lie tea” sold in vast quantities, and made-over teas[1] made to pass for fresh. How to obtain the genuine article is the housewife’s first problem. Careful examination may be made under the microscope for coloring matter, the tea may be soaked to see if it unrolls into true leaves, or after washing it in a little water the liquid may be tested with chemicals for foreign substances. But all this means trouble that few housewives care to take. Probably the most practical plan is to find by careful experiment a thoroughly reliable[2] tea-house and then confine your patronage to it. A pound of tea bought here and another there, as convenience may dictate or some friend advise, will insure you nothing but adulteration. The only safe plan is to find a house which sells good tea. Your tea bought, it must be prepared. In making a cup of tea the chemical composition and the effect of each step in its preparation must be observed or your draught will be ruined. The constituents in the leaf which you must look after are the theine, the aromatic oil, and the tannin. Your tea must be treated in such a way that the first two, which give to the drink its flavor and aroma, will be extracted, but that the bitter tannin will be left undeveloped. The theine and oil are both volatile substances, so that if your tea is steeped too long, or if it is boiled, they will literally fly away, while the tannin extracted will turn your cup into a bitter, herby drink. A rule is easily formulated from this bit of science:

Into a perfectly clean tea-pot, just scalded with boiling hot water, put a heaping tablespoonful of tea for each person, and upon it pour a cup and a half of boiling water for each spoonful. Cover your pot with a “cosy”[3] if you have one, and let it stand on the back of the range, where it will not boil, for from five to ten minutes. The length of time required to steep each variety of tea must be determined by experiment, some varieties taking longer than others. The exact length each housewife must determine when she tries a new kind; and it may be said of the exact proportion of tea to water that it as well must be determined by experiment. No rule in cooking is inflexible. It must always be modified by the good sense and the scientific care of the cook.

The English custom of making tea on the table is the prettiest and the most satisfactory. They pour upon the tea required a small quantity of boiling water, this is placed upon the table, covered with the “cosy;” a pot of water taken when boiling from the stove is kept hot by a spirit lamp, and when the tea is steeped as much boiling water as the quantity of tea used demands is poured into the tea-pot. It is allowed to stand about three minutes and then poured into the cups and on the cream. Remember, cream should always be poured into the cups first for both tea and coffee, and tea is as much improved by cream as is coffee.

The purchase of coffee is beset with the same trouble as that of tea—adulteration. You may get a manufactured berry, you may get chiccory; to avoid this careful tests must be applied and only reliable firms patronized. Nothing but unbrowned coffee should be bought; the roasting should be done at home. This process requires particular care. The coffee berry is hard and horny, water has no effect upon it even when it has been ground. It must be roasted in order that certain constituents may become soluble. These constituents are a fragrant volatile oil called caffeone, and the caffeine, which is identical with the theine of tea. By roasting the oil is distributed through the berry and so made soluble, while the caffeine is developed so that it may be absorbed by water. Just the right amount of roasting must be done or the essential constituents will be expelled and the bitter qualities will be made to predominate. I have said that the roasting should be done at home. It may be done in the shops, of course, but the operation there is carried on so unscientifically that the aroma is lost on the town instead of being shut up in the berry. Only a few days ago, passing up a business street of a city, I was astonished to find the air heavy with the delicious aroma of coffee. It scented the air for a square, and only when I came to a large grocery store was the mystery explained. The grocer was browning his coffee, and its odor was serving for an advertisement, effective, perhaps, among the ignorant, but which would warn every wise housewife not to purchase roasted coffee. The process is best carried on in one of the very nearly perfect coffee roasters to be found in the shops; if these are not at hand an ordinary dripping pan may be used. It should be covered to prevent loss of aroma, and should be continually shaken to prevent burning. The entire attention of one person should be given the coffee during this operation. When turned to a rich chestnut brown remove, keeping covered until quite cool. If left open the aroma escapes very rapidly from warm coffee, but if kept covered much of that made volatile by the heat is re-absorbed. A tight dish—an air-tight canister is best—must be ready to keep it in.

When using, grind only what you need, and take care that it is not left coarse, when the strength can not be extracted, or that it is not too fine, when the liquor will be muddy in spite of you; in this, as always, experiment until you know the degree of fineness which ground coffee should have. A heaping tablespoonful of ground coffee to a cup and a half of water is the ordinary proportion for making strong coffee—the only kind which should ever be prepared, by the way, the diluting ought always to take place in the cup; to the required amount of coffee add the white and shell of an egg and cold water to thoroughly wet the whole; stir up these ingredients in your coffee pot and pour upon them the required amount of _boiling_ hot water. Let it boil from ten to fifteen minutes, pour in half a cup of cold water and remove to the side of the stove where it can not boil. Do not boil longer than the exact time which you have found necessary for the kind of coffee you are using, if you do you lose your flavor and extract in its place a bitter principle which is ruinous. Remember always what one of our famous cooks says: “There comes a time in baking, frying or broiling when injured nature revolts and burns up, but a thing may boil until not a vestige of its original condition remains, and unless the water evaporates, it may go on boiling for hours without reminding one by smell or smoke that it is spoiled.”

Your coffee will settle in about five minutes. Now if you _must_ use a different coffee urn, gently pour off the liquor so as not to disturb the grounds. The settling of coffee is an essential point. The regulation method of stirring an egg into the freshly ground berry is undoubtedly best, but another and more economical practice may take its place. After your freshly roasted berries are cool enough to be easily handled, add to each pound a fresh egg and stir it in until each kernel is coated smoothly with the mixture. Care must be taken that the coffee be not warm enough to cook the egg. When eggs are expensive an economical method is to wash the shells before they are broken, and use with cold water to settle the coffee.

After all these precautions there are still other points to guard. Not the least is the condition of the inside of the coffee pot; it should never be stained, burnt or coated, but kept perfectly bright by being washed, and, if necessary, scoured after each meal. It would be a gain in aroma if your coffee pot could always be kept perfectly tight so that none could escape, and if it could go to the table in the same dish. The pleasant, suggestive odors which precede a meal are always signs that the most delicious flavors of your coming breakfast, dinner or tea are escaping, that through the unskillfulness of your cook you are losing what should give the greatest charm to your meal.

_Café au lait_[4] is an excellent drink and easily prepared. Make in the usual way a pint of strong coffee, and into your table urn or a pitcher pour a cup and a half of fresh milk, scalding hot; to this add the coffee and let the whole stand for five minutes in a hot place, or in a kettle of hot water.

Chocolate is a most delicious drink if properly prepared; it is, however, so often raw, muddy and strong that we have not been able to educate ourselves to its peculiar disagreeableness. Make it by the following rule and you will find it both nutritious and pleasant: Select with care the best make of chocolate, and into a little cold water rub smooth five tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate; be sure that it be rubbed in smoothly, a hard particle of chocolate is as unwelcome a visitor in your cup as floating tea leaves or black bobbing bits of coffee berries. So rub it smooth and stir it slowly into five cups of boiling water. Let it boil for about five minutes, and in the meantime heat two cups of milk; this must be stirred into the boiling chocolate and the whole allowed to simmer for a few minutes longer. You may sweeten it on the fire or in the cup.

HUXLEY ON SCIENCE.[C]

All the time that we are awake we are learning by means of our senses something about the world in which we live and of which we form a part; we are constantly aware of feeling, or hearing, or smelling, and, unless we happen to be in the dark, of seeing; at intervals we taste. We call the information thus obtained sensation.

When we have any of these sensations we commonly say that we feel, or hear, or smell, or see, or taste something. A certain scent makes us say we smell onions; a certain flavor, that we taste apples; a certain sound, that we hear a carriage; a certain appearance before our eyes, that we see a tree; and we call that which we thus perceive by the aid of our senses a thing or an object.