I have alluded, just above, to French tea-making. There was a time when tea, with our lively neighbours, was as scarce a commodity as snakes in Iceland or rum punch in Holloway Castle. Then the thin end of the wedge was introduced, and the English visitor was invited to partake of a cup of what was called (by courtesy) _thé_, which had been concocted expressly for her or him. And tea _à la Française_ used to be made somewhat after this fashion. The cup was half-filled with milk, sugar _à discrétion_ being added. A little silver sieve was next placed over the cup, and from a jug sufficient hot water, in which had been previously left to soak some half-dozen leaf-fragments of green tea, to fill the cup, was poured forth. In fact the visitor was invited to drink a very nasty compound indeed, something like the "wish" tea with which the school-mistress used to regale her victims--milk and water, and "wish-you-may-get" tea! But they have changed all that across the Channel, and five o'clock tea is one of the most fashionable functions of the day, with the _beau monde_; a favourite invitation of the society _belle_ of the _fin de siècle_ being: "_Voulex-vous fivoclocquer avec moi?_" The _déjeûner_ usually begins with a _consommé_, a thin, clear, soup, not quite adapted to stave off the pangs of hunger by itself, but grateful enough by way of a commencement. Then follows an array of dishes containing fish and fowl of sorts, with the inevitable _côtelettes à la_ somebody-or-other, not forgetting an _omelette_--a mess which the French cook alone knows how to concoct to perfection. The meal is usually washed down with some sort of claret; and a subsequent _café_, with the accustomed _chasse_; whilst the welcome _cigarette_ is not "defended," even in the mansions of the great. There is more than one way of making coffee, that of the lodging-house "general," and of the street-stall dispenser, during the small hours, being amongst the least commendable. Without posing as an infallible manufacturer of the refreshing (though indigestible, to many people) beverage, I would urge that it be made from freshly-roasted seed, ground just before wanted. Then heat the ground coffee in the oven, and place upon the perforated bottom of the upper compartment of a _cafetière_, put the strainer on it, and pour in boiling water, gradually. "The Duke" in _Geneviève de Brabant_ used to warble as part of a song in praise of tea-- And 'tis also most important That you should not spare the tea. So is it of equal importance that you should not spare the coffee. There are more elaborate ways of making coffee; but none that the writer has tried are in front of the old _cafetière_, if the simple directions given above be carried out in their entirety.