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.
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