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Show COFFEE. c4 Conversation Piece Of all the groceries in daily American use, few have as legendary leg-endary and romantic a background back-ground as coffee. Some of its colorful facts and traditions make conversation pieces almost as stimulating as the beverage itself. 1 One ' Arabian legend relates that coffee came into use when it "got the goats" of a herdsman named Kaldi. He reported to the abbot of a monastery that his flock went into a frolicsome dance after eating berries off a certain tree. When the cleric boiled the berries in water, he derived de-rived an exhilarating brew which helped his monks to stay awake during midnight prayers. This monastic coffee ritual was the predecessor of the daily cof- a cup of black coffee charged to Trotsky. In the U.S., Boston's Green Dragon coffee house was called "headquarters of the Revolution" by Daniel Webster and the Merchants' Mer-chants' House in New York was the scene of Washington's pre-inaugural pre-inaugural reception. A forerunner forerun-ner of the Revolution itself, the Boston Tea Party, when colonists colon-ists dressed as Indians dumped British tea into the harbor to protest taxes, accelerated coffee's popularity in this country. Today, To-day, Americans drink more than 300 million cups of coffee a day. In addition to its role in adventure, ad-venture, history and literature,-coffee literature,-coffee or the lack of it has been the point of issue in the courtroom. In Turkey, at one time, a husband's failure to provide pro-vide coffee for his wife was legitimate legi-timate grounds for divorce, lrt affairs of the heart, Madame du Barry was among ladies who were wooed with gifts of coffee, and Bach's Coffee Cantata sings of a girl who insists on a marriage mar-riage contract stating that she may have coffee whenever she wishes. Nowadays, discriminating discriminat-ing hostesses recognize its in-dispensability in-dispensability at socials. To Napoleon, coffee was something some-thing that "gives me warmth, an fee break enjoyed by millions of American workers and housewives. house-wives. In a survey among plant managers, 82 credited coffee breaks with a reduction in worker work-er fatigue and 62 said they increased in-creased productivity. Coffee has also been a factor in adventure and espionage. The famed Polish spy, Franz Kol-schitzky, Kol-schitzky, who saved Vienna from beseiging Turks, opened the first Viennese coffee house. As reward for his heroic exploits, including swimming the Danube several times to circumvent enemy lines, he was given sacks of green coffee cof-fee abandoned by the fleeing Turks. Today, you can find coffee houses in nearly every metropolis metrop-olis of Europe, many with their own history of famous patrons and epochal events. In England, Samuel Johnson established the Turk's Head coffee house which became a gathering place for artists art-ists and writers of his era. It is rumored that in the archives of the old Cafe Central in Herren-gasse Herren-gasse there is an unpaid bill for t unusual force." To General Sherman, Sher-man, in his remarks on troop rations, it was "something to be carried along, even at the expense ex-pense of bread." To the English clergyman and humorist Sydney Smith, it was "the intellectual beverage." Name your favorite phase of history and research will show where coffee has played a part. And, considering its popularity in America today our largest imported commodity the beverage bev-erage will undoubtedly continue to be part of the backdrop for memorable world events. : |