At These Hotels
They Wash With Great Rapidity, Sending You Back Your Clothes In Four
Or Five Hours If You Desire It.
Another very stringent order is placed before the face of all
visitors at American hotels, desiring them on no account to have
valuable property in their rooms.
I presume that there must have
been some difficulty in this matter in bygone years; for in every
State a law has been passed declaring that hotel-keepers shall not
be held responsible for money or jewels stolen out of rooms in their
houses, provided that they are furnished with safes for keeping such
money and give due caution to their guests on the subject. The due
caution is always given, but I have seldom myself taken any notice
of it. I have always left my portmanteau open, and have kept my
money usually in a traveling-desk in my room; but I never to my
knowledge lost anything. The world, I think, gives itself credit
for more thieves than it possesses. As to the female servants at
American inns, they are generally all that is disagreeable. They
are uncivil, impudent, dirty, slow - provoking to a degree. But I
believe that they keep their hands from picking and stealing.
I never yet made a single comfortable meal at an American hotel, or
rose from my breakfast or dinner with that feeling of satisfaction
which should, I think, be felt at such moments in a civilized land
in which cookery prevails as an art. I have had enough, and have
been healthy, and am thankful. But that thankfulness is altogether
a matter apart, and does not bear upon the question. If need be, I
can eat food that is disagreeable to my palate and make no
complaint. But I hold it to be compatible with the principles of an
advanced Christianity to prefer food that is palatable. I never
could get any of that kind at an American hotel. All meal-times at
such houses were to me periods of disagreeable duty; and at this
moment, as I write these lines at the hotel in which I am still
staying, I pine for an English leg of mutton. But I do not wish it
to be supposed that the fault of which I complain - for it is a
grievous fault - is incidental to America as a nation. I have stayed
in private houses, and have daily sat down to dinners quite as good
as any my own kitchen could afford me. Their dinner parties are
generally well done, and as a people they are by no means
indifferent to the nature of their comestibles. It is of the hotels
that I speak; and of them I again say that eating in them is a
disagreeable task - a painful labor. It is as a schoolboy's lesson,
or the six hours' confinement of a clerk at his desk.
The mode of eating is as follows: Certain feeding hours are named,
which generally include nearly all the day. Breakfast from six till
ten. Dinner from one till five. Tea from six till nine. Supper
from nine till twelve. When the guest presents himself at any of
these hours, he is marshaled to a seat, and a bill is put into his
hand containing the names of all the eatables then offered for his
choice. The list is incredibly and most unnecessarily long. Then
it is that you will see care written on the face of the American
hotel liver, as he studies the programme of the coming performance.
With men this passes off unnoticed, but with young girls the
appearance of the thing is not attractive. The anxious study, the
elaborate reading of the daily book, and then the choice proclaimed
with clear articulation: "Boiled mutton and caper sauce, roast duck,
hashed venison, mashed potatoes, poached eggs and spinach, stewed
tomatoes. Yes - and, waiter, some squash!" There is no false
delicacy in the voice by which this order is given, no desire for a
gentle whisper. The dinner is ordered with the firm determination
of an American heroine; and in some five minutes' time all the
little dishes appear at once, and the lady is surrounded by her
banquet.
How I did learn to hate those little dishes and their greasy
contents! At a London eating-house things are often not very nice,
but your meat is put on a plate and comes before you in an edible
shape. At these hotels it is brought to you in horrid little oval
dishes, and swims in grease; gravy is not an institution in American
hotels, but grease has taken its place. It is palpable, undisguised
grease, floating in rivers - not grease caused by accidental bad
cookery, but grease on purpose. A beef-steak is not a beef-steak
unless a quarter of a pound of butter be added to it. Those horrid
little dishes! If one thinks of it, how could they have been made
to contain Christian food? Every article in that long list is
liable to the call of any number of guests for four hours. Under
such circumstances how can food be made eatable? Your roast mutton
is brought to you raw; if you object to that, you are supplied with
meat that has been four times brought before the public. At hotels
on the Continent of Europe different dinners are cooked at different
hours; but here the same dinner is kept always going. The house
breakfast is maintained on a similar footing. Huge boilers of tea
and coffee are stewed down and kept hot. To me those meals were
odious. It is of course open to any one to have separate dinners
and separate breakfasts in his own rooms; but by this little is
gained and much is lost. He or she who is so exclusive pays twice
over for such meals - as they are charged as extras on the bill - and,
after all, receives the advantage of no exclusive cooking.
Particles from the public dinners are brought to the private room,
and the same odious little dishes make their appearance.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 122 of 140
Words from 123294 to 124312
of 142339
