From the Coffee-Room Window you can
see the Quaint Newhaven Fishwives
If you are a tourist of the feminine gender, you will probably stop at the Globe Inn, in Dumfries, for a lemon squash, or a ginger ale, although you may be brave enough to ask the rosy-cheeked landlady for a small glass of what Robert Burns used to order; for the Globe Inn is the Burns' Howff, and down its narrow court the poet slipped nightly to the brightly-lighted room where his companions waited. The chair in which the poet lolled is still there, and a right stout affair it is, and with stout arms. It is kept securely locked behind wooden doors, and the landlady made a great ceremony of opening them and insisted on each of us trying the capacious seat.
"Perhaps you write poetry yourself?" she asked; but we had to confess that we felt no more gifted with rhymes in Burns' chair than in our own inglenook in America, and followed her up the stairs to the old-time room filled with relics.
"Americans come a long way to see these old pieces," she said, as she motioned majestically to a punch bowl, and then moved to the window on whose pane the poet had written the verses to "The Lovely Polly Stewart." "You seem to think a sight of Burns? There was one American gentleman who offered me a pot of money, if I would let him take the Howff to a fair in America, but I make a tidy living out of it here and God knows if we would ever live to cross the ocean. Burns lived and died here, and what would do for him will do for me," humbly.
There are many colleges in Oxford, but at no one of them is the tourist supposed to find refreshment in the dining halls, so that it was something of a triumph to be given a tart in one of the quaint old kitchens. The tart was really a tribute to an interest in the pantry shelves which were filled with pastry, and in the explanatory list that hung beside them. Tarts have been made in the same fashion at this Oxford college for several hundred years, in order, the cook explained, with a twinkle in his eye, that the students might get what they wanted, when they slipped down on a night tart raid. It is the nick in the edge that has told generations of students the contents of the tart; an apple has only one nick, a mince has two at each end, a gooseberry three, and so on until a student who has learned the rule can choose his favorite in the dark.
Winchester, the old royal city of England, has so many places of interest, the cathedral, the famous Winchester school, the castle, in which hangs King Arthur's round table as it has hung for several hundred years, that the traveler who is there but for a day may not have time to share the wayfarer's dole at St. Cross hospital which is distributed today just as Bishop Henry de Blois, a grandson of William the Conqueror, arranged almost eight hundred years ago. This wayfarer's dole consists of a horn of ale and piece of white bread, and anyone who knocks at the hatchway of the porter's gate is entitled to receive it. About thirty wayfarers are given it daily as well as many notable people and curious travelers who knock at the door for the novelty of sharing in a picturesque survival of a mediæval charity. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of his experience, "Just before entering Winchester we stopped at the Church of St. Cross, and after looking through the quaint antiquity we demanded a piece of bread and a draught of ale, which the founder, Henry de Blois, in 1136, commanded should be given to everyone who should ask it at the gate. We had both from the old couple who take care of the church."
When you are in Paris you must not forget Rumpelmeyer, the "king of pastry makers." His shop is unpretentious, considering his vogue, and the room is all too small on a pleasant afternoon for the throng which would invade it. There are representatives from the far corners of the world. Americans are all about you; at the next table is a Russian grand duchess, perhaps, with her cavaliers; nearer the wall sits a woman from the Orient, whose soft silk draperies are in strange contrast to the modish Parisiennes; a group of children chatter of South Africa to their attendants and two natives from India have not doffed their spotless white turbans.
Sharing in a Picturesque Survival of a Mediæval Charity
Rumpelmeyer's might be considered a glorified cafeteria, and the great moment of your visit to the café is when you have taken the fork and plate from the smiling maid, and stand hesitating beside the table laden with cakes. And such cakes! Fluffy balls rolled in chocolate and cocoanut, maple crescents, diamonds of paste enriched with French fruits, tiny tarts filled with glacéd cherries, half an apricot or a plum; cornets heaped with cream of pistachio or strawberries, pastry and sweetmeats in every appetizing form, until it is difficult to make a choice. At last with plate laden you find your way to the table where something new in ices, cool or hot drinks, is served. And as you go away, you cast a lingering glance at the patisserie table and plan to come, again and again, until you have tried every kind, not knowing that new confections are offered every few days to make such a plan almost an impossibility.