Am not doing so, I will close these
semi-official remarks with an assurance to my colleagues in post-
office work on the other side of the water that I greatly respect
what they have done, and trust that before long they may have
renewed opportunities for the prosecution of their good work.
CHAPTER XIV.
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 arrangement 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 any change in the Constitution or
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 a 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 a hotel are, I fancy, mainly as
follows: a clean bed-room, 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 travelers, who are going
through the apprenticeship of their hotel lives; who may probably
never become free of the travelers' 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.
