e whole thing over again. It was charming to
see his pleasure.

When we returned home we entered the hotel between rows of palms, and
we dropped money into each of them. It seemed to me that fifty
servants were between me and the elevators. However, it was New
Year's, and we tried not to be bored by it.

People talk so much of the expense of foreign travel, but to my mind
the greatest expenditures are in paying for extra luggage and in fees.
Otherwise, I fancy that travel is much the same if one travels
luxuriously, and that in the long run things would be about equal. The
great difference is that in America all travel luxuries are given to
you for the price of your ticket, and here you pay for each separate
necessity, to say nothing of luxury, and your ticket only permits you
to breathe. But the annoyance of this continuous habit of feeing makes
life a burden. One pays for everything. It is the custom of the
country, and no matter if you arrange to have "service included," it
is in the air, in the eyes of the servants, in the whole mental
atmosphere, and you fee, you fee, you fee until you are nearly dead
from the bother of it. In Germany they raise their hats and rise to
their feet every time you pass, even if you pass every seven minutes,
and when the time comes for you to go, you have to pay for the wear
and tear of these hats.

In Paris, at the theatre, you fee the woman who shows you to your
seat, you fee the woman who opens the door and the woman who takes
your wraps. One night in midsummer we stepped across from the Grand
Hotel to the opera without even a scarf for a wrap, and the woman was
so disappointed that we were handed from one attendant to another some
half dozen times as "three ladies without wraps." And the next one
would look us over from head to foot and repeat the words, "Three
ladies without wraps," until we laughed in their faces.

French servants are the cleverest in the world if you want
versatility, but they are absolutely shameless in their greed, and
look at the size of your coin before they thank you. In fact, the
words in which they thank you indicate whether your fee was not
enough, only modest, or handsome.

"It is not too much, madam," or "thanks, madam," or "I thank you a
thousand times" show your status in their estimation.

If you are an American they reserve the right to rob you by the
impudence of their demands, until rather than have a scene, you give
them all they ask. I h