a a week for service is a high price even for a bachelor; but when
this has to be paid for every member of the family, it is ruinous.
Young ladies who dine at the same table and do not give half the
trouble of 'single gentlemen' ought not to be taxed in this way. It is
urged by many that since attendance is charged in the bill,' there
should be no other fees. But the lover of comfort will always
cheerfully pay for a little extra civility; nor do I think that this
practice--any more than that of feeing our railway porters--is a public
disadvantage. The waiter does not know till the guest goes whether he
is a person of inflexible principles or not, and, therefore, hope
ameliorates his manners and shapes his actions to all. As to getting
'attendance' out of the bill, now it has once got into it, that I
believe to be impossible. There it is, like the moth in one's
drawing-room sofa. And yet I am old enough to remember how poor Albert
Smith plumed himself on the benefit he bestowed upon the public, as he
had imagined, by introducing a fixed charge for all services and doing
away with 'Please, sir, boots.' In this country, and, to say truth, in
most others, 'Please, sir, boots,' is indigenous and not to be done
away with. We did very much better under the voluntary system, although
a few people who did not deserve it, but simply could not afford to be
lavish, were called in consequence 'screws.'

To pay the wages of another man's servants is absurd, and reminds one
of the 'plate, glass, and linen' that used to be charged for at the
posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of
brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges
were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged
less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of 'an old established and
family hotel' near Piccadilly, where the charge for putting the _Times_
upon a guest's breakfast-table was 6d. up to this present year of
grace. 'Gentlemen and families had always been supplied with it at that
price,' said the landlord, when remonstrated with, 'and it was his
principle, and his customers approved it, to keep things as they were.'
It must be admitted, however, that matters have changed for the better
in this respect elsewhere; and, at all events, the printed tariff that
may now be consulted in every modern hotel enables you to know what you
are spending.

Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both