make it a rule to avoid unpleasantness of all sorts, particularly
with the weak, under which category I find your coffee."

_Coffee Quips and Anecdotes_

Coffee literature is full of quips and anecdotes. Probably the most
famous coffee quip is that of Mme. de Sevigne, who, as already told in
chapter XI, was wrongfully credited with saying, "Racine and coffee will
pass." It was Voltaire in his preface to _Irene_ who thus accused the
amiable letter-writer; and she, being dead, could not deny it.

That Mme. de Sevigne was at one time a coffee drinker is apparent from
this quotation from one of her letters: "The cavalier believes that
coffee gives him warmth, and I at the same time, foolish as you know me,
do not take it any longer."

La Roque called the beverage "the King of Perfumes", whose charm was
enriched when vanilla was added.

Emile Souvestre (1806-1854) said: "Coffee keeps, so to say, the balance
between bodily and spiritual nourishment."

Isid Bourdon said: "The discovery of coffee has enlarged the realm of
illusion and given more promise to hope."

An old Bourbon proverb says: "To an old man a cup of coffee is like the
door post of an old house--it sustains and strengthens him."

Jardin says that in the Antilles, instead of orange blossoms, the brides
carry a spray of coffee blossoms; and when a woman remains unmarried,
they say she has lost her coffee branch. "We say in France, that she has
_coiffe_ Sainte-Catherine."

Fontenelle and Voltaire have both been quoted as authors of the famous
reply to the remark that coffee was a slow poison: "I think it must be,
for I've been drinking it for eighty-five years and am not dead yet."

In Meidinger's _German Grammar_ the "slow-poison" _bon mot_ is
attributed to Fontenelle.

It seems reasonable to give Fontenelle credit for this _bon mot_.
Voltaire died at eighty-four. Fontenelle lived to be nearly a hundred
years. Of his cheerfulness at an advanced age an anecdote is related. In
conversation, one day, a lady a few years younger than Fontenelle
playfully remarked, "Monsieur, you and I stay here so long, methinks
Death has forgotten us." "Hush! Speak in a whisper, madame," replied
Fontenelle, "_tant mieux!_ (so much the better!) don't remind him of
us."

Flaubert, Hugo, Baudelaire, Paul de Kock, Theophile Gautier, Alfred de
Musset, Zola, Coppee, George Sand, Guy de Maupassant, and Sarah
Bernhardt, all have been credited with many clever or witty s