Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1885 — The Coffee Drunkard. [ARTICLE]

The Coffee Drunkard.

“What a bright-eyed man,” said a repdrter who leaned against the cashier’s desk of a restaurant near the public buildings one day last week. The man in question had just paid a tencent check, and slipped out of the dooi with a jerky movement and a swinging of the cane he carried which decidedly endangered the people’s peace. “Bright-eyed? Yes,” said the cashier ; “he’s a coffee drunkard.” “What’s a coffee drunkard?” “A man who comes in here four times in two hours, as that man has done this morning and does every morning, and takes a half-pint of coffee every time, is a coffee drunkard. Bright eyes! Well, I should say so. That man’s condition all the time is the same as that of a man who is getting over a ‘batter.’ I mean his nerves are up in ‘G,’ his muscles are in a quiver, and his mental vision is abnormally clear. He is living at a 2:08f rate.” “Why does he do it?” “Has to. Must have a brace. Used to drink rum. Had to quit that, and now does worse. He never sleeps, they tell me.” “Do you know many such ?” “At least half a dozen.”— phi a Press. The Massachusetts manufacturing city of Lawrence has lost in population since 1880.