46 COFFEE. 



and who returned to New York via New Orleans and tlie South- 

 ern States : 



"Grenada Station, Mississippi. 

 "Stopped for breakfast: tried tea, but was not equal to it; tried coffee, 

 same result. I denominate this the champion establishment, of all places I 

 have been at around the world, for the utter depravity of its tea and cofiEee." 



The coffee-house flourishes both in Italy and in Spain, as any one 

 can vouch who has seen the large and crowded cafes in the prin- 

 cipal Italian and Spanish cities. These establishments, by their 

 general character and by the mode of serving the beverage, belong 

 essentially to the French school. You find them along the Corso 

 in Home, the Toledo in Naples, in the Galleria Vittorio Eman- 

 Tiele, and around the Piazza del Duomo in Milan ; along the Eiva 

 degli Schiavoni and the arcades which surround the Piazza di San 

 Marco in Venice, etc. — seemingly ever full, but ever decent and 

 orderly. They are, indeed, institutions, landmarks, important 

 features of every city. The guide-book invariably gives you a 

 list of them, and frequently, not without reason, advises you to 

 take at least breakfast there. Ask a direction of a passer-by in 

 the streets and he will, not improbably, answer : You know the 

 Cafe di Koma, on the Corso, or the Cafe d'ltalia ; well, walk 

 right on to it, then turn to your left, etc. And that in a country 

 where monuments mark almost every spot. But the chances are 

 that your informant is returning from the cafe or intending to 

 go there sometime during the day, and naturally enough, in any 

 given direction, the cafe is the first thing that looms up in his 

 mind's eye. 



In Madrid the Puerto del Sol' is the great cafe centre. They 

 aboimd all around this noted spot, and in the principal adjoining 

 streets. As a rule, they do not compare in splendor of appoint- 

 ments with the Paris cafes. One of them, however, was to me a 

 never-failing source of wonder and interest — the great cafe under 

 the Hotel de Paris, in the angle formed by the Carrera de San 

 Geronimo and the Calle de Alcala, as they run into the Puerto 

 del Sol. The immense hall, thus reaching from street to street, 

 had its floor a few feet below the level of the square ; and, glanc- 

 ing through one of the large windows facing on the Puerto del 

 Sol, one commanded a view of its entire extent. And a sight it 



