ch and
German fashion.

FRANCE. Were it not for the almost inevitable high roast and frequently
the disconcerting chicory addition, coffee in France might be an
unalloyed delight--at least this is how it appears to American eyes. One
seldom, if ever, finds coffee improperly brewed in France--it is never
boiled.

Second only to the United States, France consumes about two million bags
of coffee annually. The varieties include coffee from the East Indies;
Mocha; Haitian (a great favorite); Central American; Colombian; and
Brazils.

[Illustration: AN A.B.C. SHOP, LONDON]

[Illustration: HALT OF CARAVANERS AT A SERAI, BULGARIA]

Although there are many wholesale and retail coffee roasters in France,
home roasting persists, particularly in the country districts. The
little sheet-iron cylinder roasters, that are hand-turned over an iron
box holding the charcoal fire, find a ready sale even in the modern
department stores of the big cities. In any village or city in France it
is a common sight on a pleasant day to find the householder turning his
roaster on the curb in front of his home. Emmet G. Beeson, in _The Tea
and Coffee Trade Journal_ gives us this vignette of rural coffee
roasting in the south of France:

In a certain town in the south of France I saw an old man with an
outfit a little larger than the home variety, a machine with a
capacity of about ten pounds. Instead of a cylinder in which to
roast his coffee, he had perched on a sheet-iron frame a hollow
round ball made of sheet iron. In the top of this ball there was a
little slide which was opened by the means of a metal tool. In the
sheet-iron frame he had kindled his charcoal fire. Directly in
front of his roaster was a home-made cooling pan, the sides of
which were of wood, the bottom covered with a fine grade of wire
screening.

On this particular afternoon, the old man had taken up his place on
the curb; and a big black cat had taken advantage of the warmth
offered by the charcoal fire and was curled up, sleeping peacefully
in the pan nearest the fire. The old man paid no attention to the
cat, but went on rotating his ball of coffee and puffing away
pensively on his cigarette. When his coffee had become blackened
and burned, and blackened and burned it was, he stopped rotating
the ball, opened the slide in the top, turned it over, and the hot,
burned coffe