Thanks to these awnings, and the chattiness of the fat, jolly man,
and the warmth exhaled by the urns, and the circumstance that the public
houses are shut, our coffee-stalls are able to sell two brownish
beverages, called respectively coffee and tea, which otherwise could
hardly hope to achieve the honour of human consumption.
Fate has guided me on many midnight pilgrimages through the town, and I
have imbibed, sometimes with relish, the liquids alluded to; I have also
partaken of the pallid pastry and the citron-yellow buns. I am therefore
in a position to write, for the benefit of persons less well informed, a
treatise on coffee-stalls. This I shall refrain from doing. The one
point it is necessary for me to mention is that the fat, jolly man,
being deplorably distrustful, does not supply casual customers with
teaspoons. You may have a cup of alleged tea (one penny) or a cup of
alleged coffee (one penny); a dollop of sugar is dropped into the cup;
the fat, jolly man gives the mixture a stir-round with a teaspoon; then
he places the cup before you on the bar; but the teaspoon is still in
his grasp.
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