everything in this world, viewed in a
certain light, is tragic, it would be excusable to weep: but inasmuch as
everything viewed in another light is comic, a little laughter could not
be taken amiss; only beware of laughing at the sigh with which my happy
man pronounced these words, for it might be that in laughing at
him you laugh at yourself, your father, your grandfather, your
great-grandfather, your great-great-grandfather, and so on, including
your entire family as far back as Adam.

If, in laughing at such discontent, you laugh in advance at your son,
your son's son's son, and so forth to the last descendant of your entire
family, this is a matter which I do not decide. It will depend upon the
road humanity chooses to take. If it continues as it is going, some
coffee-want or other will forever strew it with thorns.

Had he said, "Chocolate is forbidden me," or tea, or English ale, or
madeira, or strawberries, you would have found his misery
equally absurd.

The great Alexander is said to have wept because he found no more worlds
to conquer. The man who bemoans the loss of a world and the man who
bemoans the loss of coffee are to my mind equally unbalanced and equally
in need of forgiveness. The desire for a cup of coffee and the desire
for a crown, the hankering after the flavor or even the fragrance of the
drink and the hankering after fame, are equally mad and equally--human.

If history is to be believed, Adam possessed all the advantages and
comforts, all the necessities and luxuries a first man could reasonably
demand.... Lord of all living things, and sharing his dominion with his
beloved, what did he lack?

Among ten thousand pleasures, the fruit of one single tree was forbidden
him. Good-by content and peace! Good-by forever all his bliss!

I acknowledge that I should have yielded to the same temptation; and he
who does not see that this fate would have overtaken his entire family,
past and to come, may have studied all things from the Milky Way in the
sky to the milky way in his kitchen, may have studied all stones,
plants, and animals, and all folios and quartos dealing therewith, but
never himself or man.

As we do not know the nature of the fruit which Adam could not do
without, it may as well have been coffee as any other. That it was
pleasant to the eyes means no more than that it was forbidden. Every
forbidden thing is pleasant to the eyes.

"Of what use is it all to me?" said Adam, looking