CHATTEE XXI. 



ADULTEEATION OF COFFEE. 



A PEiMAET requisite for making a good cup of coffee is, of 

 course, coffee. 



This might appear a superfluous statement, but, ia reality, it 

 deserves to be carefully kept in view by the consumer, considering 

 the number of preposterous substances now in the markets of the 

 world, from which many of our confiding and deluded fellow-men 

 daily endeavor to extract the much-desired beverage. 



The adulteration of coffee and the vast scale on which it is 

 practised, are well-known facts. 



I have already, for many reasons, dwelt on the advisability of 

 the rule that every family should grind their own coffee. "Were 

 this rule invariably observed by the entire coffee-consuming pub- 

 lic, coffee adulteration woiild soon be relegated into the limbo of 

 lost arts. I have, indeed, heard of a contrivance patented, years 

 ago, by an ingenious Englishman, for the purpose of moulding 

 chicory and other substances into coffee-beans. But this form of 

 adulteration, even though improved by the fertile minds of our 

 countrymen, would ever be comparatively easy of detection, and 

 consequently much less to be dreaded than adulterants in the 

 treacherous disguise of the ground article. 



Coffee consumers who, finding it impossible or inconvenient 

 to do the grinding at home, purchase their coffee already ground 

 (and they are numbered by thousands), tread a path beset with 

 snares and delusions. All trouble in this direction can be avoided 

 when resident quite a distance from the store or roasting establish- 

 ment, by using the whole coffee sold in pound packages bearing 

 the guarantee of weU-known houses. The powder which they 



