"Monseigneur, I had not the slightest intention of offending this gallant officer who, I doubt not, is an honorable man; but your excellency can never prevent my asserting that a cup of coffee, with milk and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner."
"Why, so it is," said the Duke.
"Then I am not in the wrong," persisted Saint-Foix; "and a cup of coffee"—at these words magistrates, delinquents, and auditory burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists forthwith became warm friends."
Boswell in his Life of Johnson tells a story of an old chevalier de Malte, of ancienne noblesse, but in low circumstances, who was in a coffee house in Paris, where was also "Julien, the great manufacturer at Gobelins, of fine tapestry, so much distinguished for the figures and the colours. The chevalier's carriage was very old. Says Julien with a plebeian insolence, 'I think, sir, you had better have your carriage new painted.'
"The chevalier looked at him with indignant contempt, and answered:
"'Well, sir, you may take it home and dye it.'
"All the coffee house rejoiced at Julien's confusion."
Sydney Smith (1771–1845) the English clergyman and humorist, once said: "If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee; it is the intellectual beverage."
Our own William Dean Howells pays the beverage this tribute: "This coffee intoxicates without exciting, soothes you softly out of dull sobriety, making you think and talk of all the pleasant things that ever happened to you."
The wife of the president of the United States prefers coffee to tea. Afternoon guests at the White House may be refreshed, if they choose, by a sip of tea. But while tea is on tap for callers, Mrs. Harding always has coffee for those who, like herself, prefer it.