Life in Town and Country
Veal is largely consumed, but not mutton, except in the form of lamb cutlets. Restaurants and cafés there are in profusion in all large towns, but what they give their patrons is exactly what we get in other capitals under the misnomer of “French cookery.” The restaurant has everywhere a powerful rival in the melk-salons or melkinrichtingen, where milk, coffee, chocolate, eggs, sandwiches, and cakes are served. They are cheap and excellent places to frequent at luncheon-time. The cafés are remarkable owing to an arrangement unknown elsewhere—they are divided into two parts by a sombre-hued curtain. The part of the café fronting the street is not lit up when darkness sets in; the customers sit there quietly engaged in conversation or in meditation—the Dutchman thinks a good deal—gazing the while at the passers-by in the street. On
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