Edwin Asa Dix "A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees"

A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees "The favorite _aperitifs_ are: Price in centimes.[29] Absinthe, mixed with Orgeat and seltzer-water, 50 ... The above sketchy division may perhaps add to the visitor's alien interest in Continental cafe-life, showing something of its system and rationale. These elaborate and varied concoctions, noxious and innoxious, are not, it must be understood, tossed off in the frenzied instantaneity of the American mode; before a tiny glassful of Curacao or sugar and water, the Gallic "knight of the round table" will sit for hours in utter content, reading the papers, talking, smoking, or clicking the inoffensive domino. Intoxication is almost unknown in the better cafes; their patrons may sear their oesophagi with hot Chartreuse, derange the nerves with Absinthe, stimulate themselves hourly with their little cups of black coffee and brandy; but they never get drunk. Frenchmen are temperate, even in their intemperance. An English gin-mill and probably an American bar causes more besotment than a dozen French cafes."