Continental Breakfast (1896)

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   From HARPER'S WEEKLY, 18 January 1896, pg. 66, and reprinted in the NEW YORK POST, 18 January 1896, pg. 20, col. 6:

      _BREAKFAST IN THE OLD DAYS_
   In the old days a hungry man could get more things to eat at a New England breakfast-table than are to-day served at many a banquet.  Hungry men have declined in numbers and influence, and European travel has had a depleting effect upon that fine old institution--breakfast.  No one but the "Autocrat" ever talked much at that meal, forthe viands were too tempting--great beef steaks, hot rolls, buckwheat cakes, omelets, potatoes, coffee, and even, at Mr. Emerson's, pie.  Then returned travellers began to bring back tales of the refined Continental breakfast of coffee and a roll.  It was even narrated that an Italian gentleman thought that he had eaten a very hearty breakfast when he had put cream in his coffee.
   So pie was first banished, and the other heavy articles gradually followed it into exile, and breakfast is shorn of its glories.  Those who aim at a restoration of the vigor of the Puritans should being by restoring "pie" to its former high estate, and the "Continental breakfast" should be banished from a hemisphere where the Monroe doctrine and the pie should reign supreme.

(But keep the "croissants" on the table--ed.)