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.
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