Arkansas Coffee-drinkers

As I rode on throtigh the solerían oki woods, the settlements were véry mv merous, the bridges were all ín perfect condition, aud the roads were capital. Emigrante were, indeed, leaving for Texas, but there was no sign of despau among the peple geiiei-uliy. Ou the j dontráry, all the fields yere being I jilo'.ved, find tho men were repairing i'ences and feiling trees along tho route. I could not bnt remark the extraordinary niunber of cliildren and tho beauty of i the vromen, beautiñtl not only in color and complexion, Pat in forin. Most of them were of the grand, matronly type of tlie Venus of Milo - tall, n-ect, largo hipa, white-armed, deep-bosomed. ïhey were great workers, too. Many tunea dkl I see them chopping wood lustily, and somo of tliom told me that, with their om; hands, they miikod every day nina cows. I queBtioned them about the use of coffee, and it is a fact that families thcre have been known to consume ■ nually two baga of 105 pounds weight, j atan 'average price of thirty-five cents a pound. Tuis makes the really awful sum of L115.50 per annuro. And this is npent by people who even deny themselves sugar and milk, and who live more piteously than gallev slaves. I stopped f or a drink of water at the house of an okl lady, who told me tlnit her hosband drank a cup of strong coffee every two honra or so, and that he could not live v.-ithout it. The ooffee-pot remained in the fire-place, and he woidd come in from bis plo'í'ing, swallow the hot fluid hastily, and then retiu-n to the fleld. There was one wretohed man who not only drank coffee in thia way, but ate morI'hüie in extraordinary qnantitiea, and : drank whisky and cliewed tobáceo to excess. The fact in, the fellow was constiintly exciting his nerves to let hirn feel the fact of hig existence, and then stupefying them with narcotics because they ' tore him to pieces. But it all commenced with the coffee-drinking, which has reached such proportions in Arkan aas as to merit medical attention.