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.
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