More coffee is consumed in this country than in any other under the sun; its value is understood, its power as a stimulant to bodily and mental activity is appreciated and no other article of general consumption can be named of which the public are so careful to guard against adulteration as this. Packages of ready-ground articles are generally shunned; the merchants must keep the sacks of coffee, ready browned but of different grades in sight and a mill for it to be ground in before the buyer's eyes, and these straightforward methods are the outgrowth of more than mere personal solicitudes or defences against the small frauds of imitation or substitution which in the case of innumerable other articles are submitted to with careless indifference, they result from the feeling that the active business of the community cannot be carried on in the fast way to which the New World cities have become habituated without the stimulating aid of good coffee, that is to say of genuine coffee. For the potency of the berry to refresh and impel to new exertion is not to any considerable degree dependent upon the method of preparing it for the table. Coffee causes wakefulness when eaten raw, or drawn by long steeping in cold water, its effects are rather deadened than increased when it is made into the pleasant breakfast bever-age with cream and sugar. Its energy is most expansive in the out door camp where, boiled in a camp kettle it is drunk by the pint orquart without milk and the drowsy hunters or travelers spring up and start off singing.

There are the best of reasons therefore why no great success should be expected for any eating house that depends upon boarders who are free to change, until it is made a special matter of care first, to provide genuine coffee of good qaulity, and second, to have it made strong, clear, fresh and furnished with cream, pleasant to the sight, to the sense of cleanliness and purity and to the taste. Some drink coffee for the sake of the coffee, some, Rip Van Winkle's, for the cream and sugar, but the latter, if not already past work when they begin, come over at last to the ranks of the active multitude.

The stimulation afforded by the coffee berry having become an absolute necessity it is a question only whether the coffee made is to be of such a sort that it must be gulped down like a medicine and a second draught avoided if possible, or whether sipped with the utmost enjoyment of both its flavor and fragrance, and this is a matter that rests mostly with the maker who in turn is dependent for success upon the vessel that keeps it for him after it is made, for an improper urn will spoil the best coffee ever concocted in the course of an hour or two. The most important improvement in coffee urns is that of fitting the inside with a stone jar which holds the coffee and keeps it free from metallic taint. It is practically impossible to make coffee to order as wanted, neither can coffee bought of good quality and made strong be thrown away when left over from a meal, but if kept in a metal pot or urn turns black and bitter, discolors milk and cream like a dye and has none of the fine aroma it had when first made. The substitution of a bright new tin vessel for the old and cankerous one will remedy the matter for a short time but rust spots form inside the new one within a week and the coffee gradually becomes as bad as before. If the makers of stoneware or some harmless unglazed pottery would put upon the market coffee urns with faucets, and an inner rim to hold the hoop of a muslin filtering bag a remedy would be furnished for much bad coffee within the reach of those who cannot buy the costly plated urns with the stone-ware linings. When a good way of keeping the coffee so that it will not change to ink between one meal and the next has been adopted it will become worth while to lay a stress upon the selection of the best kinds. Good Rio coffee is the most servicable, the cheapest, and in nine cases out of ten is good enough if well made, but those who can distinguish between the flavors will prefer Java, and a mixture of Java and Rio is generally satisfactory. The fancy kinds such as Mocha, African, or whatever new names may be given are generally peculiar only in being the produce of young trees which after awhile bear the same old sort of coffee as other plantations. It is said that there is no more of what used to be known as Mocha coffee; nothing remains but a name.