ing, a real tonic, and very
different from the black mud sucked by the Levantine, or the watery
roast-bean preparations of France. When the slave or freeman,
according to circumstances, presents you with a cup, he never fails
to accompany it with a "_Semm'_," "say the name of God," nor must
you take it without answering "_Bismillah_."

When all have been thus served, a second round is poured out, but
in inverse order, for the host this time drinks first, and the
guests last. On special occasions, a first reception, for instance,
the ruddy liquor is a third time handed round; nay, a fourth cup is
sometimes added. But all these put together do not come up to
one-fourth of what a European imbibes in a single draught at
breakfast.

[Illustration: NATIVE CAFE, HARAR, ABYSSINIA]

[Illustration: EARLY MANNER OF SERVING COFFEE, TEA AND CHOCOLATE

From a drawing in Dufour's _Traites Nouveaux et Curieux du Cafe, du The
et du Chocolat_]

For a more recent pen picture of coffee manners and customs in Arabia,
we turn to Charles M. Daughty's "_Travels in Arabia Deserta_"[367]:

Hirfa ever demanded of her husband towards which part should "the
house" be built. "Dress the face". Zeyd would answer, "to this
part", showing her with his hands the south, for if his booth's
face be all day turned to the hot sun there will come in fewer
young loitering and parasitical fellows that would be his
coffee-drinkers. Since the _sheukh_, or heads, alone receive their
tribes' _surra_, it is not much that they should be to the arms [of
his] coffee-hosts. I have seen Zeyd avoid [them] as he saw them
approach, or even rise ungraciously upon such men's presenting
themselves (the half of every booth, namely the men's side, is at
all times open, and any enter there that will, in the free
desert), and they murmuring he tells them, _wellah_, his affairs do
call him forth, adieu; he must away to the _mejlis_; go they and
seek the coffee elsewhere. But were there any _sheykh_ with them, a
coffee lord, Zeyd could not honestly choose but abide and serve
them with coffee; and if he be absent himself, yet any _sheykhly_
man coming to a _sheykh's_ tent, coffee must be made for him,
except he gently protest "_billah_, he would not drink." Hirfa, a
_sheykh's_ daughter and his nigh kinswoman, was a faithful ma