Chapter XX

Coffee-Houses And Doss-Houses

>>>>Why should we be packed, head and tail, like canned sardines?
>>>>-- Robert Blatchford

Another phrase gone glimmering, shorn of
romance and tradition and all that goes to make
phrases worth keeping! For me, henceforth,
coffee-house will possess anything but an agree
able connotation. Over on the other side of the
world, the mere mention of the word was sufficient
to conjure up whole crowds of its historic frequent
ers, and to send trooping through my imagination
endless groups of wits and dandies, pamphleteers
and bravos, and bohemians of Grub Street.

But here, on this side of the world, alas and alack,
the very name is a misnomer. Coffee-house: a
place where people drink coffee. Not at all. You
cannot obtain coffee in such a place for love or
money. True, you may call for coffee, and you will
have brought you something in a cup purporting to
be coffee, and you will taste it and be disillusioned,
for coffee it certainly is not.

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