The first coffee tree was found in Arabia, and in spite of the
various transplantations it has undergone, the best coffee is yet
obtained there. An old tradition states that coffee was discovered
by a shepherd of old, who saw that his flock was always in the
greatest state of excitement and hilarity when they browsed on the
leaves of the coffee tree.
Though this may be but an old story, the honor of the discovery
belongs only in part to the goat-herd. The rest belongs to him who
first made use of the bean, and boiled it.
A mere decoction of green coffee is a most insipid drink, but
carbonization develops the aroma and forms an oil which is the
peculiarity of the coffee we drink, and which would have been
eternally unknown but for the intervention of heat.
The Turks excel us in this. They employ no mill to torturate the
coffee, but beat it with wooden pestles in mortars. When the
pestles have been long used, they become precious and are sold at
great prices.
I had to examine and determine whether in the result one or the
other of the two methods be preferable.
Consequently, I burned carefully a pound of good mocha, and
separated it into two equal portions, the one of which was passed
through the mill, and the other beaten Turkish fashion in a
mortar.
I made coffee of each, taking equal weights of each, poured on an
equal weight of boiling water and treated them both precisely
alike.
I tasted this coffee myself, and caused others who were competent
judges to do so. The unanimous opinion was that coffee which had
been beaten in a mortar was far better than that which had been
ground.
Any one may repeat the experiment. In the interim I will tell you
a strange anecdote of the influence of one or the other kind of
manipulation.
"Monsieur," said Napoleon, one day to Laplace, "how comes it that
a glass of water into which I put a lump of loaf sugar tastes more
pleasantly than if I had put in the same quantity of crushed
sugar." "Sire," said the philosophic Senator, "there are three
substances the constituents of which are identical--Sugar, gum
and amidon; they differ only in certain conditions, the secret of
which nature has preserved. I think it possible that in the effect
produced by the pestle some saccharine particles become either gum
or amidon, and cause the difference."
This remark became public, and ulterior observations has confirmed
it.
DIFFERENT MODES OF PREPARING COFFEE.
Some years ago all directed their attention to the mode of
preparing coffee; the reason doubtless was that the head of the
government was fond of it.
Some proposed not to burn nor to powder it, to boil it three
quarters of an hour, to strain it, &c.
I have tried this and all the methods which have been suggested
from day to day, and prefer that known as a la Dubelloy, which
consists in pouring boiling water on coffee placed in a porcelain
or silver vessel pierced with a number of very minute holes. This
first decoction should be taken and brought to the boiling point,
then passed through the strainer again, and a coffee will be
obtained clear and strong as possible.
I have also tried to make coffee in a high pressure boiling
apparatus; all I obtained however was a fluid intensely bitter,
and strong enough to take the skin from the throat of a Cossack.
EFFECTS OF COFFEE.
Doctors have differed in relation to the sanitary properties of
coffee. We will omit all this, and devote ourselves to the more
important point, its influence on the organs of thought.
There is no doubt but that coffee greatly excites the cerebral
faculties. Any man who drinks it for the first time is almost sure
to pass a sleepless night.
Sometimes the effect is softened or modified by custom, but there
are many persons on whom it always produces this effect, and who
consequently cannot use coffee.
I have said that the effect was modified by use, a circumstance
which does not prevent its having effect in another manner. I have
observed persons whom coffee did not prevent from sleeping at
night, need it to keep them awake during the day, and never failed
to slumber when they had taken it for dinner. There are others who
are torpid all day when they have not taken their cup in the
morning.
Voltaire and Buffon used a great deal of coffee. Perchance the
latter was indebted to it for the admirable clearness we observe
in his works, and the second for the harmonious enthusiasm of his
style. It is evident that many pages of the treatise on man, the
dog, the tiger, lion and horse, were written under a strange
cerebral excitement.
The loss of sleep caused by coffee is not painful, for the
perceptions are very clear, and one has no disposition to sleep.
One is always excited and unhappy when wakefulness comes from any
other cause. This, however, does prevent such an excitement, when
carried too far, from being very injurious.
Formerly only persons of mature age took coffee. Now every one
takes it, and perhaps it is the taste which forces onward the
immense crowd that besiege all the avenues of the Olympus, and of
the temple of memory.
The Cordwainer, author of the tragedy of Zenobia, which all Paris
heard read a few years ago, drank much coffee; for that reason he
excelled the cabinetmaker of Nevers, who was but a drunkard.
Coffee is a more powerful fluid than people generally think. A man
in good health may drink two bottles of wine a day for a long
time, and sustain his strength. If he drank that quantity of
coffee he would become imbecile and die of consumption. I saw at
Leicester square, in London, a man whom coffee had made a cripple.
He had ceased to suffer, and then drank but six cups a day.
All fathers and mothers should make their children abstain from
coffee, if they do not wish them at twenty to be puny dried up
machines. People in large cities should pay especial attention to
this, as their children have no exaggeration of strength and
health, and are not so hearty as those born in the country.
I am one of those who have been obliged to give up coffee, and I
will conclude this article by telling how rigorously I was
subjected to its power.
The Duke of Mossa, then minister of justice, called on me for an
opinion about which I wished to be careful, and for which he had
allowed me but a very short time.
I determined then to sit up all night, and to enable me to do so
took two large cups of strong and highly flavored coffee.
I went home at seven o'clock to get the papers which had been
promised me, but found a note telling me I would not get them
until the next day.
Thus in every respect disappointed, I returned to the house where
I had dined, and played a game of piquet, without any of the moody
fits to which I was ordinarily subject.
I did justice to the coffee, but I was not at ease as to how I
would pass the night.
I went to bed at my usual hour, thinking that if I did not get my
usual allowance, I would at least get four or five hours,
sufficient to carry me through the day.
I was mistaken. I had been two hours in bed and was wider awake
than ever; I was in intense mental agitation, and fancied my brain
a mill, the wheels of which revolved, grinding nothing.
The idea came to me to turn this fancy to account, and I did so,
amusing myself by putting into verse a story I had previously read
in an English paper.
I did so without difficulty, and as I did not sleep I undertook
another, but in vain. A dozen verses had exhausted my poetic
faculty, and I gave it up.
I passed the night without sleep, and without even being stupified
for a moment, I arose and passed the day in the same manner. When
on the next night I went to bed at my usual hour I made a
calculation, and found out that I had not slept for forty hours.