You can order, if you please, a cup of coffee without anything to it; and,
for so doing, you may sit if you wish for five or six hours in succession.
I have said that coffee-houses are excellent places for reading; I might
have added, for _meditation_ also. For unlike public-houses, there are no
noisy discussions and disputes in them. All is calm, tranquil, and
comfortable. The beverage, too, which is drank as a beverage, as I before
remarked in a previous chapter, _cheers, but not inebriates_.
The remarks are generally equally original, and the facts, no doubt in
some degree truths, are all alike humorous; the more so when the aspect of
the book and the names of the respectable publishers suggest the higher
class of readers to whom it is addressed. Little anecdotes are
interspersed, concerning Harriet, of Coventry-street, who didn't mind her
stops; and James, behind the Mansion-house, who knew everybody's appetite,
that enliven the descriptive portions of the work, which is in its very
inappropriateness the more amusing, and cannot be read without reaping
both information and instruction on topics which no other author would
have had the temerity to discuss.
But these are only words. Let PUNCH, the rival of this Caledonian
Asmodeus, do justice to the man whose "character is stamped on every page
(of his own), who yet is above pity; poor, yet full of enjoyment; humble,
yet glorious; ignorant, yet confident."
[Illustration: GRANT'S MEDITATIONS AMONG THE COFFEE-CUPS.]
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