Crazed By Coffee

Two table d'hoters feil to discussin? the black coffee question a few nights ago, and severa! other habitués of tho table d'hote where the discussion took place chipped in their little saysos. It turned out that, while a demitasse was as much as some eould take without feeling its effects on their nerves, others could quaff a schooner and then retire and sleep as soundly aj the servants when you happen to have forgotten your latchkey. One of the chippers-in was a medical man, and he said that coffeo without milk, and with but little sugar, éxercises the most beneficial influences in some cases of sick and nervous headaches, especially if a little lemon or lima juice be added to it. "Sometime bef o re the death of the late Professor Charcot," said the man of medicine, "he was called to see a family made up of father, mother and six children, all of whom had become the victims of an uncontrollable mental irritabillity upon the slightest provocation. They never sat down to a meal without there being an explosión of bad temper, and sometimes the whole family would give way to hysterical crying at tho same time. This was naturally a very awkward state of affairs, especially when they had company, and what made it worse the servants soon joined in the general derangement. "That capped the climax, and the father sent for the professor to try and find out what was the trouble. In the middle ages the verdict of the wise men would have been that the house wa? haunted, and some one would ha"e been burned or hanged or cut into quarters for bewitching the premises, but as it was at the end of the nineteenth century, Professor Charcot looked into the hygiëne of the neighborhood for the solving of the puzzle. "On investigation he found that the man was a manufacturer and dealer in coffee and coffee essences, and that the roasting, grinding and making of his stock was carried on in the rooms beneath those where the family lived. The residental part of the building was permeated with the odor of coffee, and all the furniture, hangings and clothing were saturated with the smell. In short, the family were suffering with chronie coffeeism, and it was not until they had spent several weeks at the seashore that they recovered their normal mental heal.tb."