The recent suggestion of a tariff tax on coffee, probably put out as a feeler, is responsible for the resurrection and reintroduction of the once familiar but never appropriate phrase at the head of this article. It was never appropriate; it was always a sarcastic sneer, rather than a statement of fact, because the memory of the most aged citizen runneth not to the time when “a free breakfast table,” a breakfast table untaxed as to itself, its equipment and the food and drink it bore, could be found in any American home. At this time, under the tariff of 1897, what could be more preposterously absurd than the notion that a tax on coffee would be a decree of banishment for that alleged boon? The _Post_, being an advocate and defender of the policy of protection, although a condemner and contemner of the outrages incident to the stand-pat policy, is in no hurry to witness the advent of “a free breakfast table”; but the _Post_ prefers that such a crass absurdity, such a stinging satire as this old shibboleth, should be returned forthwith to the dust and darkness from which it was dragged when the coffee tax proposition appeared. The truth is, you go to breakfast clad in taxed garments, wearing no single article that is not taxed in the tariff; you sit in a chair that is taxed as to all the various materials that enter into it, and taxed as a whole; the table itself is similarly taxed, and we can think of no article on it that is free. Your tablecloth, your napkins and your napkin rings are all in the tariff schedules. Your fish or meat, your vegetables and fruit, your bread, your butter, your rolls, your griddle cakes, your sugar and syrup, your salt, vinegar, pepper, mustard, olive oil and all other condiments show up in the list of things taxed. So is it with your china or other crockery, and your knives, forks and spoons. And your coffee is free only as to the raw bean. It is roasted over a taxed fire and in a taxed roaster, is stored in taxed receptacles and transported by taxed horses in taxed wagons; when retailed, it goes out in taxed bags, to be deposited in other taxed vessels. Having been ground in a taxed mill, your cook prepares it for the table by using a taxed coffee pot. If you use cream in your “free” coffee you must use taxed cream; if you use sugar in it you must use taxed sugar. This is the “free breakfast table” whose exit will come if a duty is imposed on the raw coffee bean!—_Washington Post._ * * * * * That familiar old hymn, “In This Wheat By and Bye,” has lost its attractions for Jawn W. Gates and his accomplices.—_New York American._ * * * * * FAR-SIGHTED CARLOS MORALES