gone the round of all the coffee houses
in the city to pronounce moral harangues.

In some coffee houses there were singers and dancers, as before, and
many came to listen to the marvelous tales, of the _Thousand and One
Nights_.

In Oriental countries it was once the custom to offer a cup of "bad
coffee," i.e., coffee containing poison, to those functionaries or other
persons who had proven themselves embarrassing to the authorities.

While coffee drinking started as a private religious function, it was
not long after its introduction by the coffee houses that it became
secularized still more in the homes of the people, although for
centuries it retained a certain religious significance. Galland says
that in Constantinople, at the time of his visit to the city, there was
no house, rich or poor, Turk or Jew, Greek or Armenian, where it was not
drunk at least twice a day, and many drank it oftener, for it became a
custom in every house to offer it to all visitors; and it was considered
an incivility to refuse it. Twenty dishes a day, per person, was not an
uncommon average.

Galland observes that "as much money must be spent in the private
families of Constantinople for coffee as for wine at Paris," and relates
that it is as common for beggars to ask for money to buy coffee, as it
is in Europe to ask for money to buy wine or beer.

At this time to refuse or to neglect to give coffee to their wives was a
legitimate cause for divorce among the Turks. The men made promise when
marrying never to let their wives be without coffee. "That," says
Fulbert de Monteith, "is perhaps more prudent than to swear fidelity."

Another Arabic manuscript by Bichivili in the Bibliotheque Nationale at
Paris furnishes us with this pen picture of the coffee ceremony as
practised in Constantinople in the sixteenth century:

In all the great men's houses, there are servants whose business it
is only to take care of the coffee; and the head officer among
them, or he who has the inspection over all the rest, has an
apartment allowed him near the hall which is destined for the
reception of visitors. The Turks call this officer _Kavveghi_, that
is, Overseer or Steward of the Coffee. In the harem or ladies'
apartment in the seraglio, there are a great many such officers,
each having forty or fifty _Baltagis_ under them, who, after they
have served a certain time in these coffee-houses, are sure