improving effect in many of the necessary and unmentionable
comforts of this civilized age, which you find to predominate chiefly in
those cities that have most direct intercourse with us; but as you go
further west, these comforts are most disagreeably deficient. One point
in which the hotels fail universally is attendance; it is their
misfortune, not their fault; for the moment a little money is realized
by a servant, he sets up in some business, or migrates westward. The
consequence is, that the field of service is left almost entirely to the
Irish and the negro, and between the two--after nearly a year's
experience thereof--I am puzzled to say in whose favour the balance is.

I remember poor Paddy, one morning, having answered the Household
Brigade man's bell, was told to get some warm water. He went away, and
forgot all about it. Of course, the bell rang again; and, on Paddy
answering it, he was asked--

"Did I not tell you to get me some warm water?"

"You did, your honour."

"Then, why have you not brought it?"

"Can't tell, your honour."

"Well, go and get it at once."

Paddy left the room, and waited outside the door scratching his head. In
about a quarter of an hour a knock was heard:--

"Come in!"

Paddy's head appeared, and, with a most inquiring voice, he said--

"Is it warm water to dhrink you want, your honour?" _Ex uno_, &c.

Another inconvenience in their hotels is the necessity of either living
at the public table, or going to the enormous expense of private rooms;
the comfort of a quiet table to yourself in a coffee-room is quite
unknown. There is no doubt that sitting down at a table-d'hote is a
ready way to ascertain the manners, tone of conversation, and, partly,
the habits of thought, of a nation, especially when, as in the United
States, it is the habitual resort of everybody; but truth obliges me to
confess that, after a very short experience of it, I found the old adage
applicable, "A little of it goes a great way;" and I longed for the
cleanliness, noiselessness, and comfort of an English coffee-room,
though its table be not loaded with equal variety and profusion.

The American system is doubtless the best for the hotelkeeper, as there
are manifest advantages in feeding masses at once, over feeding the same
number in detail. A mess of twenty officers, on board a man-of-war, will
live better on two pounds each a month than one individual could on
three times that sum. It is the w