AMERICAN HOTELS.
I find it impossible to resist the subject of inns. As I have gone on
with my journey, I have gone on with my book, and have spoken here
and there of American hotels as I have encountered them. But in the
States the hotels are so large an institution, having so much closer
and wider a bearing on social life than they do in any other country,
that I feel myself bound to treat them in a separate chapter as a
great national feature in themselves. They are quite as much thought
of in the nation as the legislature, or judicature, or literature of
the country; and any falling off in them, or any improvement in the
accommodation given, would strike the community as forcibly as a
change in the constitution, or an alteration in the franchise.
Moreover I consider myself as qualified to write a chapter on
hotels;--not only on the hotels of America but on hotels generally.
I have myself been much too frequently a sojourner at hotels. I think
I know what an hotel should be, and what it should not be; and am
almost inclined to believe, in my pride, that I could myself fill the
position of a landlord with some chance of social success, though
probably with none of satisfactory pecuniary results.
Of all hotels known to me, I am inclined to think that the Swiss
are the best. The things wanted at an hotel are, I fancy, mainly
as follows:--a clean bedroom with a good and clean bed,--and with
it also plenty of water. Good food, well dressed and served at
convenient hours, which hours should on occasions be allowed to
stretch themselves. Wines that shall be drinkable. Quick attendance.
Bills that shall not be absolutely extortionate, smiling faces,
and an absence of foul smells. There are many who desire more than
this;--who expect exquisite cookery, choice wines, subservient
domestics, distinguished consideration, and the strictest economy.
But they are uneducated travellers who are going through the
apprenticeship of their hotel lives;--who may probably never become
free of the travellers' guild, or learn to distinguish that which
they may fairly hope to attain from that which they can never
accomplish.
Taking them as a whole I think that the Swiss hotels are the best.
They are perhaps a little close in the matter of cold water, but
even as to this, they generally give way to pressure. The pressure,
however, must not be violent, but gentle rather, and well continued.
Their bedrooms are excellent. Their cookery is good, and to the
outward senses is cleanly. The people are civil. The whole work of
the house is carried on upon fixed rules which tend to the comfort of
the establishment. They are not cheap, and not always quite honest.
But the exorbitance or dishonesty of their charges rarely exceeds a
certain reasonable scale, and hardly ever demands the bitter misery
of a remonstrance.
The inns of the Tyrol are, I think, the cheapest I have known,
affording the traveller what he requires for half the price, or less
than half, that demanded in Switzerland. But the other half is taken
out in stench and nastiness. As tourists scatter themselves more
profusely, the prices of the Tyrol will no doubt rise. Let us hope
that increased prices will bring with them besoms, scrubbing-brushes,
and other much needed articles of cleanliness.
The inns of the north of Italy are very good, and indeed, the Italian
inns throughout, as far as I know them, are much better than the name
they bear. The Italians are a civil, kindly people, and do for you,
at any rate, the best they can. Perhaps the unwary traveller may
be cheated. Ignorant of the language, he may be called on to pay
more than the man who speaks it, and who can bargain in the Italian
fashion as to price. It has often been my lot, I doubt not, to be
so cheated. But then I have been cheated with a grace that has been
worth all the money. The ordinary prices of Italian inns are by no
means high.
I have seldom thoroughly liked the inns of Germany which I have
known. They are not clean, and water is very scarce. Smiles too are
generally wanting, and I have usually fancied myself to be regarded
as a piece of goods out of which so much profit was to be made.
The dearest hotels I know are the French;--and certainly not the
best. In the provinces they are by no means so cleanly as those of
Italy. Their wines are generally abominable, and their cookery often
disgusting. In Paris grand dinners may no doubt be had, and luxuries
of every description,--except the luxury of comfort. Cotton-velvet
sofas and ormolu clocks stand in the place of convenient furniture,
and logs of wood, at a franc a log, fail to impart to you the heat
which the freezing cold of a Paris winter demands. They used to make
good coffee in Paris, but even that is a thing of the past. I fancy
that they import their brandy from England, and manufacture their own
cigars. French wines you may get good at a Paris hotel; but you would
drink them as good and much cheaper if you bought them in London and
took them with you.
The worst hotels I know are in the Havana. Of course I do not speak
here of chance mountain huts, or small far-off roadside hostels in
which the traveller may find himself from time to time. All such
are to be counted apart, and must be judged on their merits, by the
circumstances which surround them. But with reference to places of
wide resort, nothing can beat the hotels of the Havana in filth,
discomfort, habits of abomination, and absence of everything which
the traveller desires. All the world does not go to the Havana,
and the subject is not, therefore, one of general interest. But in
speaking of hotels at large, so much I find myself bound to say.
In all the countries to which I have alluded the guests of the house
are expected to sit down together at one table. Conversation is at
any rate possible, and there is the show if not the reality of
society.
And now one word as to English inns. I do not think that we
Englishmen have any great right to be proud of them. The worst about
them is that they deteriorate from year to year instead of becoming
better. We used to hear much of the comfort of the old English
wayside inn, but the old English wayside inn has gone. The railway
hotel has taken its place, and the railway hotel is too frequently
gloomy, desolate, comfortless, and almost suicidal. In England too,
since the old days are gone, there are wanting the landlord's bow,
and the kindly smile of his stout wife. Who now knows the landlord of
an inn, or cares to inquire whether or no there be a landlady? The
old welcome is wanting, and the cheery warm air which used to atone
for the bad port and tough beef has passed away;--while the port is
still bad and the beef too often tough.
In England, and only in England, as I believe, is maintained in hotel
life the theory of solitary existence. The sojourner at an English
inn,--unless he be a commercial traveller, and, as such, a member of
a universal, peripatetic tradesman's club,--lives alone. He has his
breakfast alone, his dinner alone, his pint of wine alone, and his
cup of tea alone. It is not considered practicable that two strangers
should sit at the same table, or cut from the same dish. Consequently
his dinner is cooked for him separately, and the hotel keeper can
hardly afford to give him a good dinner. He has two modes of life
from which to choose. He either lives in a public room,--called
a coffee-room,--and there occupies during his comfortless meal a
separate small table too frequently removed from fire and light,
though generally exposed to draughts; or else he indulges in the
luxury of a private sitting-room, and endeavours to find solace on
an old horse-hair sofa, at the cost of seven shillings a day. His
bedroom is not so arranged that he can use it as a sitting-room.
Under either phase of life he can rarely find himself comfortable,
and therefore he lives as little at an hotel as the circumstances
of his business or of his pleasure will allow. I do not think that
any of the requisites of a good inn are habitually to be found
in perfection at our Kings' Heads and White Horses, though the
falling-off is not so lamentably distressing as it sometimes is in
other countries. The bedrooms are dingy rather than dirty. Extra
payment to servants will generally produce a tub of cold water. The
food is never good, but it is usually eatable, and you may have it
when you please. The wines are almost always bad, but the traveller
can fall back upon beer. The attendance is good, provided always that
the payment for it is liberal. The cost is generally too high, and
unfortunately grows larger and larger from year to year. Smiling
faces are out of the question unless specially paid for; and as
to that matter of foul smells there is often room for improvement.
An English inn to a solitary traveller without employment is an
embodiment of dreary desolation. The excuse to be made for this is
that English men and women do not live much at inns in their own
country.
The American inn differs from all those of which I have made mention,
and is altogether an institution apart, and a thing of itself. Hotels
in America are very much larger and more numerous than in other
countries. They are to be found in all towns, and I may almost say
in all villages. In England and on the Continent we find them on the
recognized routes of travel and in towns of commercial or social
importance. On unfrequented roads and in villages there is usually
some small house of public entertainment in which the unexpected
traveller may obtain food and shelter, and in which the expected boon
companions of the neighbourhood smoke their nightly pipes, and drink
their nightly tipple. But in the States of America the first sign
of an incipient settlement is an hotel five stories high, with an
office, a bar, a cloak-room, three gentlemen's parlours, two ladies'
parlours, a ladies' entrance, and two hundred bedrooms.
These, of course, are all built with a view to profit, and it may be
presumed that in each case the originators of the speculation enter
into some calculation as to their expected guests. Whence are to come
the sleepers in those two hundred bedrooms, and who is to pay for the
gaudy sofas and numerous lounging chairs of the ladies' parlours? In
all other countries the expectation would extend itself simply to
travellers;--to travellers or to strangers sojourning in the land.
But this is by no means the case as to these speculations in America.
When the new hotel rises up in the wilderness, it is presumed that
people will come there with the express object of inhabiting it. The
hotel itself will create a population,--as the railways do. With us
railways run to the towns; but in the States the towns run to the
railways. It is the same thing with the hotels.
Housekeeping is not popular with young married people in America, and
there are various reasons why this should be so. Men there are not
fixed in their employment as they are with us. If a young Benedict
cannot get along as a lawyer at Salem, perhaps he may thrive as a
shoemaker at Thermopylæ. Jefferson B. Johnson fails in the lumber
line at Eleutheria, but hearing of an opening for a Baptist preacher
at Big Mud Creek moves himself off with his wife and three children
at a week's notice. Aminadab Wiggs takes an engagement as a clerk
at a steam-boat office on the Pongowonga river, but he goes to his
employment with an inward conviction that six months will see him
earning his bread elsewhere. Under such circumstances even a large
wardrobe is a nuisance, and a collection of furniture would be as
appropriate as a drove of elephants. Then, again, young men and women
marry without any means already collected on which to commence their
life. They are content to look forward and to hope that such means
will come. In so doing they are guilty of no imprudence. It is
the way of the country; and, if the man be useful for anything,
employment will certainly come to him. But he must live on the fruits
of that employment, and can only pay his way from week to week and
from day to day. And as a third reason I think I may allege that
the mode of life found in these hotels is liked by the people who
frequent them. It is to their taste. They are happy, or at any rate
contented, at these hotels, and do not wish for household cares. As
to the two first reasons which I have given I can agree as to the
necessity of the case, and quite concur as to the expediency of
marriage under such circumstances. But as to that matter of taste,
I cannot concur at all. Anything more forlorn than a young married
woman at an American hotel, it is impossible to conceive.
Such are the guests expected for those two hundred bedrooms. The
chance travellers are but chance additions to these, and are not
generally the main stay of the house. As a matter of course the
accommodation for travellers which these hotels afford increases
and creates travelling. Men come because they know they will be fed
and bedded at a moderate cost, and in an easy way, suited to their
tastes. With us, and throughout Europe, inquiry is made before an
unaccustomed journey is commenced, on that serious question of
wayside food and shelter. But in the States no such question is
needed. A big hotel is a matter of course, and therefore men travel.
Everybody travels in the States. The railways and the hotels have
between them so churned up the people that an untravelled man or
woman is a rare animal. We are apt to suppose that travellers make
roads, and that guests create hotels; but the cause and effect run
exactly in the other way. I am almost disposed to think that we
should become cannibals if gentlemen's legs and ladies' arms were
hung up for sale in purveyors' shops.
After this fashion and with these intentions hotels are built. Size
and an imposing exterior are the first requisitions. Everything about
them must be on a large scale. A commanding exterior, and a certain
interior dignity of demeanour is more essential than comfort or
civility. Whatever an hotel may be it must not be "mean." In the
American vernacular the word "mean" is very significant. A mean white
in the South is a man who owns no slaves. Men are often mean, but
actions are seldom so called. A man feels mean when the bluster is
taken out of him. A mean hotel, conducted in a quiet unostentatious
manner, in which the only endeavour made had reference to the comfort
of a few guests, would find no favour in the States. These hotels
are not called by the name of any sign, as with us in our provinces.
There are no "Presidents' Heads" or "General Scotts." Nor by the name
of the landlord, or of some former landlord, as with us in London,
and in many cities of the Continent. Nor are they called from some
country or city which may have been presumed at some time to have
had special patronage for the establishment. In the nomenclature of
American hotels the speciality of American hero-worship is shown,
as in the nomenclature of their children. Every inn is a house,
and these houses are generally named after some hero, little known
probably in the world at large, but highly estimated in that locality
at the moment of the christening.
They are always built on a plan which to a European seems to be most
unnecessarily extravagant in space. It is not unfrequently the case
that the greater portion of the ground-floor is occupied by rooms and
halls which make no return to the house whatever. The visitor enters
a great hall by the front door, and almost invariably finds it full
of men who are idling about, sitting round on stationary seats,
talking in a listless manner, and getting through their time as
though the place were a public lounging room. And so it is. The
chances are that not half the crowd are guests at the hotel. I will
now follow the visitor as he makes his way up to the office. Every
hotel has an office. To call this place the bar, as I have done too
frequently, is a lamentable error. The bar is held in a separate room
appropriated solely to drinking. To the office, which is in fact a
long open counter, the guest walks up, and there inscribes his name
in a book. This inscription was to me a moment of misery which I
could never go through with equanimity. As the name is written, and
as the request for accommodation is made, half a dozen loungers look
over your name and listen to what you say. They listen attentively,
and spell your name carefully, but the great man behind the bar does
not seem to listen or to heed you. Your destiny is never imparted
to you on the instant. If your wife or any other woman be with you,
(the word "lady" is made so absolutely distasteful in American hotels
that I cannot bring myself to use it in writing of them) she has been
carried off to a lady's waiting room, and there remains in august
wretchedness till the great man at the bar shall have decided on her
fate. I have never been quite able to fathom the mystery of these
delays. I think they must have originated in the necessity of waiting
to see what might be the influx of travellers at the moment, and then
have become exaggerated and brought to their present normal state by
the gratified feeling of almost divine power with which for the time
it invests that despotic arbiter. I have found it always the same,
though arriving with no crowd, by a conveyance of my own, when no
other expectant guests were following me. The great man has listened
to my request in silence, with an imperturbable face, and has usually
continued his conversation with some loafing friend, who at the time
is probably scrutinizing my name in the book. I have often suffered
in patience; but patience is not specially the badge of my tribe,
and I have sometimes spoken out rather freely. If I may presume
to give advice to my travelling countrymen how to act under such
circumstances I should recommend to them freedom of speech rather
than patience. The great man when freely addressed generally opens
his eyes, and selects the key of your room without further delay. I
am inclined to think that the selection will not be made in any way
to your detriment by reason of that freedom of speech. The lady in
the ballad who spoke out her own mind to Lord Bateman was sent to her
home honourably in a coach and three. Had she held her tongue we are
justified in presuming that she would have been returned on a pillion
behind a servant.
I have been greatly annoyed by that silence on the part of the hotel
clerk. I have repeatedly asked for room, and received no syllable
in return. I have persisted in my request, and the clerk has nodded
his head at me. Until a traveller is known, these gentlemen are
singularly sparing of speech,--especially in the West. The same
economy of words runs down from the great man at the office all
through the servants of the establishment. It arises, I believe,
entirely from that want of courtesy which democratic institutions
create. The man whom you address has to make a battle against the
state of subservience, presumed to be indicated by his position, and
he does so by declaring his indifference to the person on whose wants
he is paid to attend. I have been honoured on one or two occasions by
the subsequent intimacy of these great men at the hotel offices, and
have then found them ready enough at conversation.
That necessity of making your request for rooms before a public
audience is not in itself agreeable, and sometimes entails a
conversation which might be more comfortably made in private. "What
do you mean by a dressing-room, and why do you want one?" Now that
is a question which an Englishman feels awkward at answering before
five-and-twenty Americans, with open mouths and eager eyes; but
it has to be answered. When I left England, I was assured that
I should not find any need for a separate sitting-room, seeing
that drawing-rooms more or less sumptuous were prepared for the
accommodation of "ladies." At first we attempted to follow the advice
given to us, but we broke down. A man and his wife travelling from
town to town, and making no sojourn on his way, may eat and sleep
at an hotel without a private parlour. But an Englishwoman cannot
live in comfort for a week, or even, in comfort, for a day, at any
of these houses, without a sitting-room for herself. The ladies'
drawing-room is a desolate wilderness. The American women themselves
do not use it. It is generally empty, or occupied by some forlorn
spinster, eliciting harsh sounds from the wretched piano which it
contains.
The price at these hotels throughout the Union is nearly always the
same, viz., two and a half dollars a day, for which a bedroom is
given, and as many meals as the guest can contrive to eat. This
is the price for chance guests. The cost to monthly boarders is,
I believe, not more than the half of this. Ten shillings a day,
therefore, covers everything that is absolutely necessary, servants
included. And this must be said in praise of these inns: that the
traveller can compute his expenses accurately, and can absolutely
bring them within that daily sum of ten shillings. This includes
a great deal of eating, a great deal of attendance, the use of
reading-rooms and smoking-rooms--which, however, always seem to
be open to the public as well as to the guests,--and a bedroom
with accommodation which is at any rate as good as the average
accommodation of hotels in Europe. In the large Eastern towns baths
are attached to many of the rooms. I always carry my own, and have
never failed in getting water. It must be acknowledged that the price
is very low. It is so low that I believe it affords, as a rule, no
profit whatsoever. The profit is made upon extra charges, and they
are higher than in any other country that I have visited. They are so
high that I consider travelling in America, for an Englishman with
his wife or family, to be more expensive than travelling in any part
of Europe. First in the list of extras comes that matter of the
sitting-room, and by that for a man and his wife the whole first
expense is at once doubled. The ordinary charge is five dollars, or
one pound a day! A guest intending to stay for two or three weeks
at an hotel, or perhaps for one week, may, by agreement, have this
charge reduced. At one inn I stayed a fortnight, and having made no
such agreement was charged the full sum. I felt myself stirred up to
complain, and did in that case remonstrate. I was asked how much I
wished to have returned,--for the bill had been paid,--and the sum I
suggested was at once handed to me. But even with such reduction the
price is very high, and at once makes the American hotel expensive.
Wine also at these houses is very costly, and very bad. The usual
price is two dollars, or eight shillings, a bottle. The people of the
country rarely drink wine at dinner in the hotels. When they do so,
they drink champagne; but their normal drinking is done separately,
at the bar, chiefly before dinner, and at a cheap rate. "A drink,"
let it be what it may, invariably costs a dime, or fivepence. But
if you must have a glass of sherry with your dinner, it costs two
dollars; for sherry does not grow into pint bottles in the States.
But the guest who remains for two days can have his wine kept for
him. Washing also is an expensive luxury. The price of this is
invariable, being always fourpence for everything washed. A cambric
handkerchief or muslin dress all come out at the same price. For
those who are cunning in the matter this may do very well; but
for men and women whose cuffs and collars are numerous it becomes
expensive. The craft of those who are cunning is shown, I think, in
little internal washings, by which the cambric handkerchiefs are kept
out of the list, while the muslin dresses are placed upon it. I am
led to this surmise by the energetic measures taken by the hotel
keepers to prevent such domestic washings, and by the denunciations
which in every hotel are pasted up in every room against the
practice. I could not at first understand why I was always warned
against washing my own clothes in my own bedroom, and told that no
foreign laundress could on any account be admitted into the house.
The injunctions given on this head are almost frantic in their
energy, and therefore I conceive that hotel keepers find themselves
exposed to much suffering in the matter. 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 leave
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 travelling 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 labour. 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 marshalled 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 at 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 room; 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.
But the most striking peculiarity of the American hotels is in their
public rooms. Of the ladies' drawing-room I have spoken. There
are two and sometimes three in one hotel, and they are generally
furnished at any rate expensively. It seems to me that the space
and the furniture are almost thrown away. At watering places, and
sea-side summer hotels they are, I presume, used; but at ordinary
hotels they are empty deserts. The intention is good, for they are
established with the view of giving to ladies at hotels the comforts
of ordinary domestic life; but they fail in their effect. Ladies will
not make themselves happy in any room, or with ever so much gilded
furniture, unless some means of happiness be provided for them. Into
these rooms no book is ever brought, no needle-work is introduced;
from them no clatter of many tongues is ever heard. On a marble table
in the middle of the room always stands a large pitcher of iced
water, and from this a cold, damp, uninviting air is spread through
the atmosphere of the ladies' drawing-room.
Below, on the ground floor, there is, in the first place, the huge
entrance hall, at the back of which, behind a bar, the great man of
the place keeps the keys and holds his court. There are generally
seats around it, in which smokers sit,--or men not smoking but
ruminating. Opening off from this are reading rooms, smoking rooms,
shaving rooms, drinking rooms, parlours for gentlemen in which
smoking is prohibited, and which are generally as desolate as the
ladies' sitting-rooms above. In those other more congenial chambers
is always gathered together a crowd, apparently belonging in no way
to the hotel. It would seem that a great portion of an American
inn is as open to the public as an Exchange, or as the wayside of
the street. In the West, during the early months of this war, the
traveller would always see many soldiers among the crowd,--not
only officers, but privates. They sit in public seats, silent but
apparently contented, sometimes for an hour together. All Americans
are given to gatherings such as these. It is the much-loved
institution to which the name of "loafing" has been given.
I do not like the mode of life which prevails in the American
hotels. I have come across exceptions, and know one or two that are
comfortable,--always excepting that matter of eating and drinking.
But taking them as a whole I do not like their mode of life. I feel,
however, bound to add that the hotels of Canada, which are kept,
I think, always after the same fashion, are infinitely worse than
those of the United States. I do not like the American hotels; but
I must say in their favour that they afford an immense amount of
accommodation. The traveller is rarely told that an hotel is full, so
that travelling in America is without one of those great perils to
which it is subject in Europe. It must also be acknowledged that for
the ordinary purposes of a traveller they are very cheap.