Among ten thousand pleasures, the fruit of one single tree was forbidden him. Good-by content and peace! Good-by forever all his bliss!
I acknowledge that I should have yielded to the same temptation; and he who does not see that this fate would have overtaken his entire family, past and to come, may have studied all things from the Milky Way in the sky to the milky way in his kitchen, may have studied all stones, plants, and animals, and all folios and quartos dealing therewith, but never himself or man.
As we do not know the nature of the fruit which Adam could not do without, it may as well have been coffee as any other. That it was pleasant to the eyes means no more than that it was forbidden. Every forbidden thing is pleasant to the eyes.
"Of what use is it all to me?" said Adam, looking around him in Eden, at the rising sun, the blushing hills, the light-green forest, the glorious waterfall, the laden fruit-trees, and, most beautiful of all, the smiling woman--"of what use is it all to me, when I dare not taste this--coffee bean?"
"And of what use is it all to me?" said Mr. Caillard, and looked around him on the Lüneburg heath: "coffee is forbidden me; one single cup of coffee would kill me."
"If it will be any comfort to you," I said, "I may tell you that I am in the same case." "And you do not despair at times?"--"No," I replied, "for it is not my only want. If like you I had everything else in life, I also might despair."
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I WAS VERY LITTLE
There was a time, when I, an urchin slender,
Could hardly boast of having any height.