The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-12-02
LIKE CHANGE FROM
BEANS TO COFFEE
Old And Young Feel Boston'S
Latest Craze
LINED UP AT COUNTERS
Men, Women and Children Seek the
Beverage at All Hours of the
Day and Night-Coffee
Counter and Cafe.

Boston-Boston is coffee mad. Men,
women and even children stand three
deep in front of the counters where the
beverage is dispensed waiting their turn.
There is scarcely a moment in the day
from early morning until dark that some
customer is not thus employed, and al
the luncheon hour the sole accompaniment
of the coffee is often the slightest triffe oil
solid food. There are places like those OF
other cities, where coffee is sold along
with forty sweetened beverages, some of
them mixed with ice cream, but the UNI
usual thing about the Boston coffee craze
is the fact that it affords support to many
places where no other drink and no food
is dispensed.
Boston does not call these resorts cafes
In Boston cafe is a place where you can
get almost any drink save coffee. cafe,
indeed is held in low esteem by Boston
responsibility, but coffee counter is a
sort of social exchange.
People make appointments to meet at
these places. Two or three just on the
edge of the great retail provision market
present at the noon hour sort Of epitome
of Boston society.
Persons of the highest fashion perhaps
dot not frequent these places, but it IS
never safe to speak slightingly of the
coffee counters in any circles of Boston.
OF course there are coffee counters and
coffee counters.
There is one where you sip your cup and
MUNICH your cruller in company with the
car conductor, the marketman who has
driven in from his suburban farm, and
even Jack ashore. who stumbles in with
the hope of SOLDERING up. There are others
where you elbow Harvard professors, spec
tacled girls from the art schools and uni
versity lecture rooms, and the most deli
cous old ladies in that kind of fine anti
quated shabbiness which in Boston is the
certain cachet of high responsibility.
Place to Unbend.
These various types meet on terms
ranging all the way from nodding ac-
quaintance to cordial intimacy. You in
voluntarily catch the most delicious
snatches Of conversation to right and left
as you drink. A scandal mongering society
reporter of the yellow kind could make
her fortune by frequenting the right cof-
fee counters.
The coffee counter is place to unbend,
"A place for the exchange of family news
| and domestic recipes for the cure of lum-
| bago and the sanitary cooking of beans.
| Here, too, one sees the display of bar
| gains by women fresh from the morning s
| campaign in the neighboring market
| There are coffee counters where you
may study special types of Bostonians
| One employs three or four pretty girls
| ,,TI -. ..t1l i
youth, but of Boston's grizzled middle
| age.
| 1t is delicious to note the awkward at
tempts of these veterans at gallantry.
| With only narrow counter between the
wrinlxled customers and the fresh look
ing girls the temptation to the former
| Is irresistible
and every veteran puts down his nickel
| and seeks to cover the rosy fingers with
| his dry palm when the change is laid
upon the counter Only dotage could en-
| joy this form OF Irritation, but it goes on
every day in the week and all day long
If jealous wives do not make irruptions
into such places it is only that they
know better than their lords the absurd
futility of their gallantries. The coffee
| counters are as innocent of a real scandal
| as a Quaker meeting
Drink Openly.
! Nothing about the coffee counters Is
| more characteristic of Boston as she is
| than the fact that the patrons take their
| drink in full view of passers by upon
the streets Boston is SO enamored of her
| law touching the public sale of strong
| drink that half the town thinks it fine
| thing to take its liquid refreshment of
any kind in the presence of the other
| half.
| Nobody seems in the least shocked or
disturbed at this display. The professors,
their specialized young women pupils,
| and the dear old ladies. monuments of an
cestral responsibility, turn their cups bot
tom upward in the sight of a gaping
| multitude.
Custom has made this public display
| exhilarating rather than embarrassing
| for those who are not quite certain of
| themselves, and customers of assured re-
| spectabillty are stonily indifferent to the
| stares of the street. The grlzzled elders
execute their absurd gallantries with
| pride in. the publicity with which the
trifiing favors of the pretty girls behind
! the counter are accorded, and the girls
wink over the heads of the old men at
| younger men on the sidewalk.
| The marvel of 1t all ia that Boston s
| special providence has not taken official
cognizance of these public goings on.
| With the next gubernatoral campaign a
! year off some censor should have leisure
/ to look to the nerves of youth.
|
Oreoon Keats the Dutch