The Feasts of Autolycus Part 10

To add cream or milk to Turkish coffee would be a crime; nor must more sugar be dropped into its fragrant, luscious depths. Ordinary after-dinner coffee should also be drunk without cream or milk, if pleasure be the drinker's end. Indeed, a question it is whether it be ever wise to dilute or thicken coffee and tea with milk, however well boiled, with cream, however fresh. The flavour is destroyed, the aroma weakened. But black coffee with breakfast would mean to begin the day at too high a state of pressure, in undue exhilaration of spirits. To speak honestly, coffee is no less a mistake in the morning hours than Whisky-and-soda or Absinthe. But custom has sanctioned it; it has become a bad habit from one end of the Continent to the other, in innumerable otherwise wholly decorous British households. But slaves of habit should wear their chains so that there is as little friction and chafing as possible. Therefore, make your morning coffee strong and aromatic and pure as if destined for after-dinner delights: but pour into it much milk; half and half would prove proportions within reason. Not out of the way is it to borrow a hint from provincial France and serve _cafe-au-lait_ in great bowls, thus tacitly placing it forever on a plane apart from _cafe noir_. Or else, borrow wisdom from wily Magyar and frivolous Austrian, and exquisite, dainty, decorative whipped cream heap up high on the surface of the morning cup. Take train to-morrow for Budapest; haunt its _cafes_ and kiosques, from the stately Reuter to the Danube-commanding Hungaria; study their methods with diligence and sincerity; and then, if there be a spark of benevolence within you, return to preach the glad gospel of good coffee to the heathen at home. A hero you would be, worthy countryman of Nelson and of Wellington; and thus surely should you win for yourself fame, and a niche in Westminster Abbey.