In which case, before rapid-fire guns and the
modern machinery of warfare, they will perish the more swiftly and
easily.
CHAPTER XX--COFFEE-HOUSES AND DOSS-HOUSES
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 agreeable 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 frequenters, 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.
And what is true of the coffee is true of the coffee-house. Working-men,
in the main, frequent these places, and greasy, dirty places they are,
without one thing about them to cherish decency in a man or put
self-respect into him.
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