hat drinks it not;
That such a _Dwarf_ should rise to such a stature!
But Custom is but a remove from Nature.
A _little_ Dish, and a _large_ Coffee-house,
What is it, but a _Mountain_ and a _Mouse_?

* * * * *

_Mens humana novitatis avidissima._

[Illustration: A BROAD-SIDE OF 1670]

And so it came to pass that coffee history repeated itself in England.
Many good people became convinced that coffee was a dangerous drink. The
tirades against the beverage in that far-off time sound not unlike the
advertising patter employed by some of our present-day coffee-substitute
manufacturers. It was even ridiculed by being referred to as "ninny
broth" and "Turkey gruel."

[Illustration: A BROAD-SIDE OF 1672]

_A brief description of the excellent vertues of that sober and
wholesome drink called coffee_ appeared in 1674 and proved an able and
dignified answer to the attacks that had preceded it. That same year,
for the first time in history, the sexes divided in a coffee
controversy, and there was issued _The Women's Petition against Coffee,
representing to public consideration the grand inconveniences accruing
to their sex from the excessive use of the drying and enfeebling
Liquor_, in which the ladies, who had not been accorded the freedom of
the coffee houses in England, as was the custom in France, Germany,
Italy, and other countries on the Continent, complained that coffee made
men as "unfruitful as the deserts where that unhappy berry is said to be
bought." Besides the more serious complaint that the whole race was in
danger of extinction, it was urged that "on a domestic message a husband
would stop by the way to drink a couple of cups of coffee."

This pamphlet is believed to have precipitated the attempt at
suppression by the crown the following year, despite the prompt
appearing, in 1674, of _The Men's Answer to the Women's Petition Against
Coffee, vindicating ... their liquor, from the undeserved aspersion
lately cast upon them, in their scandalous pamphlet_.

The 1674 broadside in defense of coffee was the first to be illustrated;
and for all its air of pretentious grandeur and occasional bathos, it
was not a bad rhyming advertisement for the persecuted drink. It was
printed for Paul Greenwood and sold "at the sign of the coffee mill and
tobacco-roll in Cloath-fair near West-Smithfield, who selleth the best
Arabian coffee powder and chocolate in cake or roll, after the Spanish
f