THE CAFE

The English custom of five o'clock tea (as I have
said somewhere) charmed me at once; and the
French institution of the cafe has also appealed to
me from the beginning. I was not an habitue of
the cafe. I did not taste the cream of the life
there ; but I was glad to enjoy a glass of coffee—
yes, a glass, not a cup, of coffee—at a cafe now and
then. You can have wine, beer, brandy, and all
sorts of drinks at the cafe ; and one may not have
enjoyed the real virtues of the cafe before one took
to these drinks of strong flavour. But I was con¬
tent with a glass of black coffee.

A glass for coffee may sound prosaic ; but the
E>ench black coffee ought to be drunk out of that
tall trumpet-shaped glass. As somebody has said
the French " poulet roti " is a different thing from