imbleful glasses in which it is served, has
exclaimed, "Blessed be monks for making thee! Compound of devil, dew and
honey! in thee have they sought to indemnify themselves for lack of wife,
and partially have they succeeded."

All these liqueurs, indeed, are rather ladies' drinks. So too are the
cremes--mocha, tea, noyau, cumin, mint, ether, etc.; also the sirops,
including orgeat, very refreshing in the summer-time. Masculine
preferences are for beer, immense quantities of which are drunk,
especially in the evening, or for fine champagne, the name bestowed upon
superior brandy. However, ladies and gentlemen unite in disposing of
half-frozen punch (_sorbets_) or eating ices--say a _tutti frutti_ at the
Cafe Napolitain--ravishing mixtures of cold and passion, the fruits of the
tropics imbedded in a slice of the North Pole.

French drinks are, like French dishes, artistic preparations, and the
French cafes artistic, pretty places, indispensable to the scenic
completeness of things in France, if not to the comfort and well-being of
the people. A landscape without water, a bride without a veil, a house
without windows, would be something like France (Paris especially) without
cafes. To take away its cafes would be to pluck out its eyes, to leave it
dull and dead--food without appetite, marriage without love or the
honeymoon. Its industries may give it sinew, muscle, bone and nerve; the
Institute may give it brains; but the cafes--they are its life-blood and
its pulse.

The French cultivate even a love of home in going to the cafe. For what is
a love of home? It is certainly not a mere local attachment, such as the
cat has for the particular hearth-rug where she dozes by day or the
particular tiles and water-spouts where she howls by night. It is rather
the love of family and friendly union, in which the French take especial
delight, gathering together in little knots by the open window, in the
garden, on the sidewalk, or, it may be, in the cafe, talking in the
leaping, emancipated, touch-and-go style, in the merry, vaulting style in
which they excel, on all the lighter topics.

But the desire to economize keeps away a great many people, for the French
are very economical. In the great army of the _bourgeois_, as well as in
the great army of the _blouses_--many of whom could be bourgeois if they
chose--whole families, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, abstain from
going to the cafe, either alone or accompanied, from Chr