uisite
dalliance. Every few moments I look suddenly and savagely at the clock
to see if it can be playing some saturnine trick. No, even now it is
only 7:32. In the lively alertness of the morning mind a whole wealth of
thought and accurate observation can be crammed into a few seconds. I
halt for a moment at the window of that little lunchroom on Market
Street (between Sixteenth and Fifteenth) where the food comes swiftly
speeding from the kitchen on a moving belt. I wonder whether to have
breakfast there. It is such fun to see a platter of pale yellow
scrambled eggs sliding demurely beside the porcelain counter and
whipped dextrously off in front of you by the presiding waiter. But the
superlative coffee of the Broad Street Station lunch counter generally
lures me on.

What mundane joy can surpass the pleasure of approaching the station
lunch counter, with full ten minutes to satisfy a morning appetite!
"Morning, colonel," says the waiter, recognizing a steady customer.
"Wheatcakes and coffee," you cry. With one deft gesture, it seems, he
has handed you a glass brimming with ice water and spread out a snowy
napkin. In another moment here is the coffee, with the generous jug of
cream. You splash in a large lump of ice to make it cool enough to
drink. Perhaps the seat next you is empty, and you put your books and
papers on it, thus not having to balance them gingerly on your knees.
All round you is a lusty savour of satisfaction, the tinkle of cash
registers, napkins fluttering and flashing across the counters, coloured
waiters darting to and fro, great clouds of steam rising where the big
dish covers are raised on the cooking tables. You see the dark-brown
coffee gently quivering in the glass gauge of the nickel boiler. Then
here come the wheatcakes. Nowhere else on earth, I firmly believe, are
they cooked to just that correct delicacy of golden brown colour;
nowhere else are they so soft and light of texture, so hot, so
beautifully overlaid with a smooth, almost intangible suggestion of
crispness. Two golden butter pats salute the eye, and a jug of syrup.
It is now 7:38.

As everyone knows, the correct thing is to start immediately on the
first cake, using only syrup. The method of dealing with the other two
is classic. One lifts the upper one and places a whole pat of butter on
the lower cake. Then one replaces the upper cake upon the lower, leaving
the butter to its fate. In that hot and enviable embrace the butte