Our man at the bar, John Burns, discovers the joys of warm beer

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, reading 141 books over the course of a few months, but that was a side project of mine over the fall and if I’m going to be completely frank, since we’re old friends now, I’ll admit that it wasn’t always tea in my cup as I worked my way through eight linear feet of Canadian nonfiction.

Now that I’ve finished the reading, you’d think I’d never pick up a book again, but I found myself leafing through Charles Dickens the other day—it’s the snap in the air—and came across this passage from Our Mutual Friend: “The bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters was a bar to soften the human breast.…[The rooms] had red curtains matching the noses of the regular customers, and were provided with comfortable fireside tin utensils, like models of sugar-loaf hats, made in that shape that they might, with their pointed ends, seek out for themselves glowing nooks in the depths of the red coals, when they mulled your ale, or heated for you those delectable drinks, Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose.”