After A Few Months' Acquaintance With European "Coffee,"
One's Mind Weakens, And His Faith With It, And He Begins
To Wonder If The Rich Beverage Of Home, With Its Clotted
Layer Of Yellow Cream On Top Of It, Is Not A Mere Dream,
After All, And A Thing Which Never Existed.
Next comes the European bread - fair enough, good enough,
after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic;
and never any change, never any variety - always the same
tiresome thing.
Next, the butter - the sham and tasteless butter; no salt
in it, and made of goodness knows what.
Then there is the beefsteak. They have it in Europe, but they
don't know how to cook it. Neither will they cut it right.
It comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter.
It lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering
bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape,
and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers
cut off. It is a little overdone, is rather dry,
it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm.
Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing;
and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better
land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an
inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle;
dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little
melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness
and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling
out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms;
a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing
an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak;
the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the
tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel
also adds a great cup of American home-made coffee,
with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and
yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate
of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup - could
words describe the gratitude of this exile?
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