ding, to infuse
and settle. The old fashion, however, of mixing with an egg, and boiling a
few minutes, makes a coffee hardly inferior in flavor. In fact, the
methods are many, but results, under given conditions, much the same; and
we may choose urn, or old-fashioned tin pot, or a French biggin, with the
certainty that good coffee, well roasted, boiling water, and good judgment
as to time, will give always a delicious drink. Make a note of the fact
that long boiling sets free tannic acid, powerful enough to literally tan
the coats of the stomach, and bring on incurable dyspepsia. Often coffee
without milk can be taken, where, with milk, it proves harmful; but, in
all cases, moderation must rule. Taken too strong, palpitation of the
heart, vertigo, and fainting are the usual consequences.

_Cocoa_, or, literally, cacao, from the cacao-tree, comes in the form of a
thick seed, twenty or thirty of which make up the contents of a gourd-like
fruit, the spaces between being filled with a somewhat acid pulp. The
seeds, when freed from this pulp by various processes, are first dried in
the sun, and then roasted; and from these roasted seeds come various forms
of cocoa.

_Cocoa-shells_ are the outer husk, and by long boiling yield a pleasant
and rather nutritious drink. Cocoa itself is the nut ground to powder, and
sometimes mixed with sugar, the husk being sometimes ground with it.

In _Chocolate_--a preparation of cocoa--the cocoa is carefully dried and
roasted, and then ground to a smooth paste, the nuts being placed on a hot
iron plate, and so keeping the oily matter to aid in forming a paste.
Sugar and flavorings, as vanilla, are often added, and the whole pressed
into cakes. The whole substance of the nut being used, it is exceedingly
nutritious, and made more so by the milk and sugar added. Eaten with bread
it forms not only a nourishing but a hearty meal; and so condensed is its
form, that a small cake carried in traveling, and eaten with a cracker or
two, will give temporarily the effect of a full meal.

In a hundred parts of chocolate are found forty-eight of fatty matter or
cocoa-butter, twenty-one of nitrogenous matter, four of theobromine,
eleven of starch, three of cellulose, three of mineral matter, and ten of
water; there being also traces of coloring matter, aromatic essence, and
sugar. Twice as much nitrogenous, and twenty-five times as much fatty
matter as wheaten flour, make it a valuable food, though the e