You all know the seed of the coffee tree. Permit me to give its history. You will see that it is instructive.

The coffee tree came originally from Africa, where from time immemorial it has been cultivated on the declivities of Abyssinia that elope toward the Red Sea. About the fifteenth century, something like four hundred years ago, the coffee tree crossed this sea and penetrated into Arabia, where it has since been cultivated, and whence especially we get the famous coffee of Mocha.

The use of coffee spread very early and with great rapidity in the East. It penetrated Europe much more slowly, and it was first taken in France at Marseilles.

Coffee was first drunk in Paris in 1667. The seeds which furnished it were brought in small quantity by a French traveller named Thevenot. Two years afterward, in 1669, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Sublime Porte in the time of Louis XIV., induced the courtesans of that great king to taste it, and they found it very agreeable. However, its use did not spread for a long time. It. was not until the eighteenth century that it began to be generally used...