"MRS. E. S. WARNER: Madam--It was quite a pleasure to receive your very kind letter of April 1st. I congratulate you most heartily, and am proud to learn that from the _seed I sent was produced the first coffee in the States_. I think I wrote you that the plant requires shade. In this climate we prefer to plant in fresh, timbered land; cutting out at first only the undergrowth, and taking out a few trees every year after for two or three years, thus graduating the shade and ventilating as appears to be required. The palatine (or plantain, or banana, as you probably call it) makes a good shade, and may be cut out, or under leaves trimmed off as may seem to be necessary. Coffee requires a rich, vegetable soil, or manure. The berry is fully ripe when dark red, but the grain is matured if the berry is picked when it has become yellow or only turning red; however, the coffee is of better quality if the berry is fully ripe, that is, of a deep or dark red. When gathered, it should be spread out at once to dry in the sun. It may be dried on mats, scaffolds or platforms of planks or boards. In good or favorable weather it requires about three weeks to dry. Here it is often dried on the ground. It may be spread from two to four inches thick, and should be stirred twice or three times a day; and if it should get wet a few times on the dryer, before half dry, no harm will be done and the coffee not injured in the least, if frequently stirred to prevent fermentation. When half dry it should be protected from rain and dew. If it has been wet a few times it will be more easily cleaned, but if frequently wet it will be of a darker color; also much darker, and even black and spoiled, if allowed to heat and ferment. It may be pulped by some of the pulping machines now in use, the day it is gathered, then washed and dried. The pulped coffee will dry in a few days, occupies less space in drying, and is of a lighter color, which, with you, I presume, are considerations of little importance at present. "You will know the coffee is sufficiently dry when the hull crushes readily under the foot. The most simple, and, by the way, not a very bad process for cleaning the coffee, is the primitive mode of cleaning rice; that is, to beat it out in a deep mortar with a heavy pestle, and as the chaff accumulates dip out the coffee with a cup in the left hand, pouring back into the mortar from the same height, at the same time blowing off the chaff with a fan in the right hand, repeating the process until clean.