Whisky, oatmeal, and tea are characteristics of Scottish life; but the devotion of the Scots to coffee is quite a new matter. Coffee drinking has achieved popularity among us almost at a bound. The craze attacks men only, and confines itself to men of the business and professional classes. Go to -any tea-room you like, either in the forenoon or the afternoon, and you wil] find men drinking coffee. No longer do we near the question, "What will you have, old man?" You are met with, "Coming for a coffee?" And the answer always is Whence this sudden desire for coffee, this throwing off of an age-old national convention? Before the war the average man and coffee were strangers, or, at least, casual acquaintances, Now the coffee abstainer is the exception. It is not altogether a blind folly of fashion this thirst for coffee, though it cannot be wholly divorced from the desire to follow the vogue. It is a war legacy~and how refreshing it is ta be table to chronicle something bequeathed to us from the great struggle that is not malignant in character. In France and Flanders and in the East coffee was about the only safe beverage for the troops in their spells of leisure. Every peasant in France had the coffee-pot bubbling on the stove, and there were few who were not willing to dispense its fragrant contents—for a consideration. The official pint of tea, morning and afternoon, did not suffice for the soldier, as long as he had the opportunity to buy he took draughts of coffee,—with a touch of cognac if the fates were kind. Hence it is that we have contracted a liking for coffee—the male part of us anyway.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.