Page 2 Advertisements Column 3

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22366, 13 September 1934, Page 2

The salt in “ Huia" is iodised for health. It is the butter recommended by doctors. —17/3/34. Tlie quaint old town of Merseburg, celebrated for its cathedral and many other historical relics, also holds the record of being the first town in Germany in which coffee was prepared and drunk —but with disastrous results. For the good housewife, who was the first woman in Merseburg to try her hand at concocting the unknown beverage, used beef broth instead of water for its preparation. In May, 1637, a Dutch merchant. Mijnheer Van Smiten, sent a sample of the new “ Koileyi ” to his business friend Herr Hervana, of Merseburg, and asked him for his opinion of the beverage. This was promptly forthcoming in the shape of an insulting letter, enclosing a doctor's bill for medicine winch bad been found necessary to cure the writer from the effects of “this disgusting drink.” Mijnheer Van Smiten replied that the coffee was all right, as had been testified by other business friends in Leipzig, “who probably bad a finer sense of taste than the crude Merseburgers.” Thus it came about that while coffee was first prepared in Merseburg, it was first popularised in , Leipzig. I