“Courtesy is the coat of the customers in a Coffee-house. The Coffee-house itself is as Paradise in its carpets, its company and its tender delights. When the waiter comes with the Coffee in its cup of porcelain, sorrow disappears, and all anguish sinks under its dominion. In its water we wash away our impurities, and burn out our solicitudes in its fire. The man who has looked only on its chafing dish will say, ‘Fie upon the Wine and the Wine Vats.’” Coffee won the day. There is, however, another story of its introduction—how in the far-off past a poor dervish, who lived in the deserts of Arabia, noticed that his goats came home every evening in a state of hilarity. Unable to account for this, he watched them, and found them feeding on the blossoms and berries of a tree which he had never before noticed. He experimented upon himself by eating them, and soon became as jocund as his goats, so much so, that he was accused of having partaken of the accursed juice of the grape. But he soon convinced his maligners that the source of his high spirits was harmless, and they, tasting, became converts, and the berry became of general use. From Abyssinia, the use of coffee spread to Persia and Arabia, thence to Aden, Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and Constantinople, whence it found its way to Venice in 1615. But it is hard to say exactly when its use was introduced into England. Robert Burton mentions it in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, but not in the 1621 edition. He says,[142] “The Turks have a drink called Coffee (for they use no wine), so named of a berry, as black as soot, and as bitter (like that black drink which was in use among the Lacedæmonians, and perhaps the same), which they sip still of, and sup as warm as they can suffer; they spend much time in those coffee houses, which are somewhat like our alehouses or taverns, and there they sit, chatting and drinking, to drive away the time, and to be merry together, because they find by experience that kind of drink, so used, helpeth digestion, and procureth alacrity.” Anthony à Wood says that the first coffee-house was kept in 1650 in Oxford, by Jacobs, a Jew; and it seems generally recognised that the first coffee-house in London was opened in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, in 1652, by one Pasqua Rosee, a Greek, servant to Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant. In “A Broadside against COFFEE, or the Marriage of the Turk” (1672), he is thus mentioned:— “A Coachman was the first (here) _Coffee_ made, And ever since the rest _drive on_ the trade; _Me no good Engalash!_ and sure enough, He plaid the Quack to salve his Stygian stuff; _Ver boon for de stomach, de Cough, de Ptisick_, And I believe him, for it looks like Physick.” Here is Rosee’s handbill:— “THE VERTUE OF THE COFFEE DRINK. “First publiquely made and sold in England, by _Pasqua Rosee_.