Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader

by John Ludwig Hülshof

Nothing is so needful to health as good, pure air. Whether you are in the schoolroom or in the house, remember this. Bad air is so much poison, and the more we breathe it the worse it gets. The poison is carbonic acid, and to breathe it long is certain death.

Not many years ago, during a storm at sea, a stupid sea-captain ordered his passengers to go below in the hold of the vessel. Then he covered up the hold, so that no fresh air could enter. When the storm was over he opened the hold, and found that seventy human beings had died for want of pure air.

Through his gross ignorance of the laws of life, he had done all this mischief. Remember what I say: insist on having good air; for impure air, though it may not always kill you, is always bad for your health.

LESSON III

COFFEE

Coffee is made from the berries of a tree called the coffee plant, or coffee tree. This tree grows in some of the hot countries of the world, as Brazil, Cuba, Arabia, and Java. The best coffee comes from Arabia. But most of the coffee that is used in this country comes from Brazil.

When first known, the coffee tree was a wild shrub growing among the hills of Caffa, in the northeastern part of Africa. But when people learned what a pleasant drink could be made from its berries, they began to take it into other countries, where they cultivated it with much care.

There is an old story told of a shepherd who, it is said, was the first to use this drink. He noticed that after his goats had fed on the leaves of a certain tree—the coffee plant—they were always very lively and wakeful. So he took some of the leaves and berries of the plant, and boiling them in water, he made a drink for himself. He found it so pleasant to the taste that he told some of his neighbors about it. They tried it and were as much pleased as himself. And so, little by little, the drink came, after a while, into common use.

The coffee plant is a beautiful little tree, growing sometimes to the height of twenty feet. It has smooth, dark leaves, long and pointed. It has pretty, white blossoms, which grow in thick clusters close to the branches. Its fruit looks a little like a cherry; and within it are the coffee berries, two in each cherry.

When ripe, the red fruit turns to a deep purple and is sweet to the taste. In Arabia the fruit is allowed to fall on mats placed under the trees; but in other countries it is commonly gathered as soon as it is ripe, and it is then dried by being placed on mats in the sun.