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Updated: June 12, 2025
Negroes, hitherto almost unknown to the Yankee boy, handled bales and barrels on the wharves, their gleaming black bodies naked to the waist. Planters from the fertile country behind the town rode in with their attendant black boys, and gathered at the coffee-houses on King Charles Street. It was to one of these, the "Scarlet Fish," that the bluff Delaware man took his protégés for dinner.
In the little Campo are two Frankish coffee-houses, before which we sit quite in European fashion on handsome chairs and benches, listening to pleasant music, and regaling ourselves with ices. During my residence in Constantinople I had the good fortune to be present at some very entertaining festivities.
The leader of the House of Lords imbibed until six every morning, was carried to bed, and came down about two in the afternoon; two noblemen declared that they drank a gallon and a half of Champagne and Burgundy at one sitting; in some coffee-houses it was the custom, when the night's drinking ended, for the company to burn their wigs.
'Twas calculated for His late Majesty of Sacred Memory, that Great Patron of Noble Poetry, and the Stage, for whom the Muses must for ever mourn, and whose Loss, only the Blessing of so Illustrious a Successor can ever repair; and 'tis a great Pity to see that best and most useful Diversion of Mankind, whose Magnificence of old, was the most certain sign of a flourishing State, now quite undone by the Misapprehension of the Ignorant, and Mis-representing of the Envious, which evidently shows the World is improv'd in nothing but Pride, Ill Nature, and affected Nicety; and the only Diversion of the Town now, is high Dispute, and publick Controversies in Taverns, Coffee-houses, &. and those things which ought to be the greatest Mysteries in Religion, and so rarely the Business of Discourse, are turn'd into Ridicule, and look but like so many fanatical Stratagems to ruine the Pulpit as well as the Stage.
Constantinopolitan pastry-cooks sold here pies and sweetmeats in the morning; roasted mutton, or kebabs, in the afternoon; and in the evening, a kind of jelly called mehalabye. Here, too, are nume-rous coffee-houses, crowded from three o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock at night.
But the porters of Constantinople, who never drink any thing stronger than water, and eat very little animal food, will lift and carry heavier burthens than any other porters in the known world. Among the refreshments of these warm countries, I ought not to forget mentioning the sorbettes, which are sold in coffee-houses, and places of public resort.
The King's aunts, who were on very intimate terms with the ambassador, adopted his opinion, and the conduct of the King and Queen was equally and loudly censured in the apartments of Versailles and in the hotels and coffee-houses of Paris.
Can it have better recommendations to ninety-nine hundredths of mankind? In 1840, when this tour was written, all the politicians of the earth were deciding, in their various coffee-houses, what all the monarchs were to do with the Eastern question.
Petersburg or Moscow; down the slopes and ravines are woods and gardens, with coffee-houses and eating-houses, and other places of popular entertainment.
There is a kind of conversation made up entirely of scraps and hearsay, as there are a kind of books made up entirely of references to other books. This may account for the frequent contradictions which abound in the discourse of persons educated and disciplined wholly in coffee-houses.
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