THE COLFEE PALACE.

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 99, 5 August 1882, Page 323

THE COLFEE PALACE.

Tlie abortive Coffee Palace scheme lies a dying, gasping for breath, the doctors have given the patient up, and nothing now remains but to make its last will and testament, and to perform the last sad obsequies over its grave. We predicted this result from the first. It was ushered into being without a hope of its survival. Requiescat ■in pace ! The Star gives three ingenious reasons why it ought to have been kept alive. We can give three equally good reasons why it must have died. First, that it was the unfortunate offspring of consumptive parents ; second, that its nurses and sponsors endeavoured unduly to force its growth, and differed among themselves as to the mode of treatment ; and third, that their interest in the infant was not dictated by motives of " pure love and affection," but the prospective pickings from the estate, which, it would some day come into. There is something amusing in the idea of the Star that its parents indulged the fond hope that it would " at once spring into existence fully armed and equipped like the demi-god of fable." The " demi-god " here referred to is evidently the female divinity of the Greeks, Pallas. We are astonished that the Star, which displays such a keen sense of the ridiculous, missed the obvious pun on the words "palace" and "Pallas." This coffee pallas scheme was " invita Minerva." We sincerely hope, however, that the gentlemen who are responsible for the failure will not meet with a similar fate to that which bofel Tiresias and Hephaestus. If another Poseidon were to strike the site of the proj>osed Coffee Palace with a trident we should expect, not ahorse, but an ass to spring up.