The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1899-01-25

do you know" said a girl who is a
close observer of social customs, as she
put down her cup the other afternoon
on the tea table, 81 really believe" she
went on. .that Cuba and Hawaii and
Porto Rico are already influencing our
tea tables. says Anna Rittenhouse in the
Philadelphia press / don't know
whether the men have had this effect
on the afternoon tea tables by serving
through the war, or whether the women
who nave lone nothing but read about
the splendid coffee served in. our new
countries nave determined to have it in
stead of tea. I do not know which of
these reasons may be right, but tea is
declining as a beverage. You watch what
1 say to you and see if I'm not right
II believe" said another girl, you are
right. l ascribe this change to the war;
riors. Four or five men came in to see me
on Sunday afternoon. and when offered
them tea, one OF them said: why don't
you give us some good c~offee?"
What do you want with coffee, this
time of day?" L asked.
".Well, we lived on it for five months
the four Of them exclaimed, and during
that time we have gotten used to 1t
and can't do without it,
81 stop into a restaurant two or three
times a day to get a good cup of cof-
fee,v said one of them That is ali We
begged for in Cuba, and the fellows in
Manila write me they have the same
yearning. It is coffee they want all the
time; they do not care for any other
beverage
49,, continued the girl. 81 went down
and persuaded the maid to make me
four cups of good rich coffee, and had
it brought up to these men. They en-
ioyed it immensely. The next Sunday
afternoon, when two men who had
been in the war came to see me,
without saying anything to them about
nv former discussion. 1 made them
coffee in a new coffee pot | had placed
on nv tea table. They did not see exs
aetly what I was doing. They only
turned their backs with disgust on the
samovar, thinking I was going to give
them tea. When / handed them their
fragrant coffee I wish you could have
seen their looks of amazed delight. They
drank it eagerly, and on going both OF
them exclaimed that 1 was the ~jolliest
girl in town.
That is the way to treat your call
ers.' they said, Give the fellows who
have been in the war a good cup OF cot
fee and they will say you have the finest
tea table in existence
The conversation of these girls in
terested me very much. 1 had myself
been serving coffee often instead of tea,
but 1 did that from habit. / had lived
most of my life very near Cuba and
fhou alt tea was as wishy-washy as most
peonle of the sub-tropical countries think
It is.
Upon looking into the matter l found
there is a steady gain in that direction.
Cuba is having its effects upon us, and
7 beIieve that when the Americans get
control of the great coffee exports OF
Cuba. and it becomes fashionable, as L
now predict it will, for Americans to
have their coffee plantations in Cuba
and live in the same way as the old
southern planters used to live, | pre-
dict that when that time comes. fand it
isn't very far off, the fashionable set
will drink coffee as a beverage at every
thing.
Paris. you know. has been having a
great deal of amusement with itself,
serving tea at 5 o'clock. 1t is $50 Eng
fish. so American" they say, and they
think it is delightful. The Parisians
hate tea, but the women are gowned
TO fit the situation and that is all the
Parisians care about.
Now we are beginning to drink coffee
because the men who served in the war
want it in the afternoons as well as in
the mornings, but soon we'll be doing it
q la Cuba and Manila.
I went a little further than social OBJ
RI l-lv11 E5nu-r, into same
other interesting statistics. The figures
of the Treasury Board of Statistics show
that the coffee importations of this VIM
ter have been the heaviest in the history
of America, and the tea imports the
highest in very many years. Eight hum
dred million pounds of coffee have Deen
used in America his year. This makes
to sum up each person about eleven
hounds annually, while no firm here has
ever shown such a result before. Putting
a little more arithmetic on 1T. 1t would
have taken twenty-seven thousand cars
In line that would reach from New York
to Baltimore to nave transported the COT
fee we have used this year. There is more
in this thar pure faddism.
The United States has annexed the
great coffee growing countries of the
world. Coffee is an easy thing to grow
and it is an easier thing to sell, and the
women who want to make a financial
venture that looks success almost in the
face at the beginning, had best think
about this prospect to fill their purses.
There is no risk in a woman going to
Cuba or the Philippi rs, or Hawaii, as a
resident. The United States mail and
steamship service will put her in close
communication with all Of her friends in
the civilized world. She can become a cof-
fee grower, and begin the life which every
woman from the beginning of time in the
United States has envied-that of the
chatelaine of a great Southern p~lanta-
tion.
There are one or two countries of the
world which are consuming as much cof-
fee as we are doing now. These are Hol-
land and Denmark, and why? Because
Holland and Denmark own great coffee
growing islands, and coffee drinking with
them is an influence of their W islands.
Porto Rico has great spaces of land
that any woman could ban gain for and
plant her own coffee there. 1t grows
successfully on the highlands and the
plateaus and tina is where the healthlest
sites are in Porto Rico.
Cuba is capable of supplying 100,0OO,O0O
pounds annually. In Porto Rico and the
pl,i1;nnines there are great tracts of land