Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/197

1864.] what might he not have done with the tea-table—the rallying-point of social life to so many who never had a sofa—for his theme?

From the general use of coffee in the cities and large towns of Germany, we have inferred its general use by the peasantry; but even this is quite limited, in Upper Bavaria at least; it is found only where the influence of city-life has penetrated. Sometimes a peasant woman has a little hid in her chest, from which she stealthily prepares and drinks a cup when her husband is away; but it is little used. This article was brought into Western Europe in the seventeenth century, and found beer in possession of Germany. The monks are said to have preached against the use of coffee, as anticipating, by the dense black smoke which arose from burning it, the "fumes of hell." It came from Turkey, and at that day the Turk was still the hereditary dread of all the peoples on the middle and upper Danube. He was next thing to the Devil; and what came direct from the former could be but recent from the latter.

Their beloved beer could not be traced so directly to an origin in the nether world. The German tribes, as far back as history or tradition reports them, seem to have loved this quieting beverage. Traces of their coming together as now for banqueting purposes, under the shade of Germany's primeval forests, are still found in history and historical traditions. There is one fact which Americans, so accustomed to rapid transformations of society by migration, immigration, and intermixture of races, can scarcely comprehend, even when they know it as a fact: it is the persistency with which national traits adhere to a people in an old country, through generations and decades of generations and of centuries, withstanding the shock of revolution both in government and religion. Tacitus says of these people:—"At meals, they sit every man upon a seat by himself and at a separate table. Arising, they proceed armed to their business; and they go armed also to their banquets. It is no reproach to them to continue day and night drinking. Their drink is fermented from barley or wheat into a certain resemblance of wine. Their food is simple,—wild fruits, fresh game, or coagulated milk. They satisfy hunger without formality and without delicacies. In regard to thirst they do not exercise this moderation. Indulge their appetites by giving them all they desire, and you may conquer them by their vices not less easily than by arms."

Viewing, then, these people of Upper Bavaria, and of Munich in particular, in their cold, raw air,—in their supposed exposure to typhus and typhoid fevers,—deficiency of good food,—the want of the domestic circle as cemented in our country over other beverages,—the national abstemiousness in regard to food, and the addictedness to beer for thousands of years past,—and we have a somewhat rational explanation of the springing-up and development into such monstrous proportions of the manufacture and consumption of this article. Of the many it may be said,—

Bavaria, not including the Rhenish Palatinate, uses over six million bushels of barley, and upwards of seven million pounds of hops, annually, in its breweries, making over eight million eimers, that is, about five million barrels of beer. But nearly half the kingdom is wine-growing, and uses comparatively little beer; so that this is mainly consumed in the other half, that is, by about three millions of people. At an average price of three and a half cents per quart, there is consumed in the kingdom fifty million florins, or over twenty million dollars, annually, in this beverage. Both manufacture and consumption have their head-quarters in Munich. The quantity manufactured in this city alone in 1856-7 was nine hundred and fifty thousand eimers, or about five hundred and seventy thousand barrels, being nearly five barrels a head for the whole population, men,