Of the present state and position of coffee-shops in one country, I feel myself called upon, however, briefly to treat. The coffee-houses of London have, within the last thirty years, done, to my mind, so much good; have worked such important results, and offer so many curious questions for solution, both social and commercial, that I should be unjust were I to pass them over. I mean the genuine, orthodox, London coffee-houses—coffee-shops, if you will; where coffee is dispensed to the million at varying rates of one penny, three half-pence, and two-pence per cup; where eggs, bread and butter, bacon, and similar refreshments are provided at moderate rates; but where no ardent spirits or fermented liquors of any kind are either demanded by the customers or conceded by the proprietors; where—in lieu of the glasses that were wont to circle round the board, and the good company that was wont to fall underneath it in the old-fashioned coffee-houses—there is provided for the serious, well-conducted frequenters, a feast of newspapers and a flow of cheap periodicals. You and I can remember when such coffee-houses were not. If, in the old time, we wanted a cup, a dish or a bowl of coffee, we were compelled to go to the coffee-room of an hotel for it; provided always that we did not care to consume it at home. And coffee at home, even, was in those days, not by any means a faultless compound. Our aunts and mothers and sisters were blindly attached to certain prejudices and superstitions respecting the fining or clearing of coffee. Noxious compositions, such as dried fish-skins, egg-shells, what ought to have been isinglass (but was fish-bones boiled to a jelly,) together with red-hot coals, were thrown into the unresisting coffee-pot to faciliate the fining operation. Certain strange and fetish rites were also performed with the same view, by knocking the coffee-pot a cabalistic number of times on the hob, and chucking it up in mid air till the hot liquid within became a confused mass of grouts and conflicting flavors. Coffee-houses have effected a great reform in this respect, and have driven away many baneful, though time-honored superstitions.
There is scarcely a street in London—certainly it would be difficult to find three together, unprovided with a coffee-shop. The types do not vary much. Where men go simply for amusement or dissipation, they will naturally congregate in classes: the beggar will go to the beggar’s public-house, and the thief to the thieves’ theatre. But a coffee-house is neutral ground. There are in every coffee-shop whig, and tory, and radical publications, and whigs, tories and radicals assembled harmoniously to read them; for the readers are as mute as the papers.
Something like uniformity, almost amounting to monotony, prevails in the majority of London coffee-shops. The ornamental is generally sacrificed to the useful. A plain room, divided into plain stalls by varnished partitions, and fitted with plain Pembroke tables, papers, periodicals, and magazines, not quite guiltless of coffee stains and bread-and-butter spots, a neat waitress, economical of speech, and who is forever ringing the changes between two refrains of “coffee and slice,” and “tea and an hegg”—are common to all coffee-houses. There is more deal in some, more mahogany in others; there are aristocratic coffee-houses, where they serve you silver salt-castors with your muffins, and silver cream-jugs with your coffee; there are low—very low—coffee-shops, where there is sand on the floor, and an ill odor pervading the place “generally all over.” Yet, in all these coffee-houses, high or low, aristocratic or humble, clean or dirty, deal or mahogany furnished, night or day; I can sit for hours and wonder. I ponder on the evidence of Mr. Pamphilon before the coffee-committee of the House of Commons, not twenty years ago; and, reading that, and reading the excise returns, how I wonder! I wonder when I see these strong bands of honest working-men; of swart artisans; of burly coal-heavers and grimy ballast-porters; who are content to come straight from the factory, the anvil, or the wharf to the coffee-shop; who can bid the shining river of beer flow on unheeded, and content themselves with the moderate evening’s amusement to be found in cheap periodicals. And, forced as I am sometimes to admit the presence in my coffee-cup of some other ingredients besides coffee, such as chicory, burnt beans, pounded bones, calcined clover, or such trifling little strangers—I wonder still at the immense good the penny cup of coffee (as it should be,) but still the cup, coffee or not coffee, has worked in this huge London. Whatever it be, they drink it, and it does not make them drunk; and drinking, they read; and reading, they learn to think, and to wash, and to teach their little children to read, and to think, and to wash, too. I doubt if a murder were ever planned in a coffee-shop.
Charles Dickens.
JAMES LOGAN OF PENNSYLVANIA.
———
FROM THE GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE.
———
James Logan was descended from the Scottish family of Logan of Restalrig, known in history for little else save its connection with the celebrated Gowrie conspiracy. Driven from Scotland by the legal proceedings consequent upon the singular discovery of their father’s letters to Gowrie in 1608, the two sons of the last Logan of Restalrig migrated to Ireland and established themselves at Lurgan. Robert, the younger son, subsequently returned to Scotland, where he married, and had a son Patrick, who removed to Ireland, taking with him a well-connected Scottish bride, and an affection for the religious opinions of George Fox. Out of a considerable family, only two children of Patrick Logan grew up to manhood, William, who was a physician at Bristol, and James, the subject of the present biography. The latter was born at Lurgan “in 1674 or 1675.” He seems to have had an aptitude for the acquisition of languages, and daring a youth passed in various places in the three kingdoms—for his parents removed from Ireland back to Scotland and thence to England—James Logan picked up considerable knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish.