e," but when drunk on the spot
compares fairly with the cheaper wines of Europe. Some of the finest
brands of Californian red wine (such as that known as Las Palmas),
generally to be had from the producers only, are sound and
well-flavoured wines, which will probably improve steadily. It is a
thousand pities that the hotels and restaurants of the United States
do not do more to push the sale of these native wines, which are at
least better than most of the foreign wine sold in America at
extravagant charges. It is also alleged that the Californian and other
American wines are often sold under French labels and at French
prices, thus doing a double injustice to their native soil. Coffee or
tea is always included in the price of an American meal, and these
comforting beverages (particularly coffee) appear at luncheon and
dinner in the huge cups that we associate with breakfast exclusively.
Nor do they follow the meal, as with us, but accompany it. This
practice, of course, does not hold in the really first-class hotels
and restaurants.

The real national beverage is, however, ice-water. Of this I have
little more to say than to warn the British visitor to suspend his
judgment until he has been some time in the country. I certainly was
not prejudiced in favour of this chilly draught when I started for the
United States, but I soon came to find it natural and even necessary,
and as much so from the dry hot air of the stove-heated room in winter
as from the natural ambition of the mercury in summer. The habit so
easily formed was as easily unlearned when I returned to civilisation.
On the whole, it may be philosophic to conclude that a universal habit
in any country has some solid if cryptic reason for its existence, and
to surmise that the drinking of ice-water is not so deadly in the
States as it might be elsewhere. It certainly is universal enough.
When you ring a bell or look at a waiter, ice-water is immediately
brought to you. Each meal is started with a full tumbler of that
fluid, and the observant darkey rarely allows the tide to ebb until
the meal is concluded. Ice-water is provided gratuitously and
copiously on trains, in waiting-rooms, even sometimes in the public
fountains. If, finally, I were asked to name the characteristic sound
of the United States, which would tell you of your whereabouts if
transported to America in an instant of time, it would be the musical
tinkle of the ice in the small white pitchers t