A MOORISH COFFEE STAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 403, 21 June 1881, Page 2

A MOORISH COFFEE STAND.

Leaving the market place, we passed through a crumbling old archway into a. shady lane shut in by high walls. Here a Moorish coffee stand was established in a. shanty run up against the inside of the arch; and benches were placed along the-

■walls of the lane for customers. It was an amusing study to watch the keeper of that coffee stand at work preparing the cup of coffee ordered for me by Simon. He was a little gray wrinkled m.«n with bent figure, clad in a complete suit of flame colour, which gave him a semidiabolical aspect to eyes familiar with the opera make-up of Goethe’s Mephistopheles. Hie oddly-shaped kettle, too, placed on a very small stove level with his chin, had something alchemical about it Seen in the gloom of the shanty, the fancy easily transmuted it from a kettle into an ajembic for the distillation of uncanny

liquors ; and the patient, keenly watch face of the old Moor as he ground the ■portion of coffee for the cup and fanned the flame under this alembical kettle, would have made a very fair model for a Paracelsus. Meu might come and men might go in the quiet lane, passing from the dust and strife of the market, but this t£ue artist went on intently grinding the berries and fanning the fire as if his earthly horizon had been bounded by the wall of his rickety workshop, and the whole duty of man had been the brewing of good coffee. After five minutes waiting the powerful potion was put into my hand It was worth waiting for. Black, thick and strong, the sip of liquor in the tiny cup half filled with grounds was more refreshing than a quart of the mawkish mixture hurriedly slashed into one's cup by the breathless waiter of a Parisian cafd —Temple Bar.