The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1876-11-09
English Inns and American Hot els.

A friends writes: / shall never forget
when remembering the minor pleasure
of my visit to England, my first expert
ence of an "inn." We went directly t,
Chester, and. to the disgtist of the por
ters, declined to go where, being evi
IDENTIFY gentry" we should have gone
by instinct-to the elegant spic-and-span
bran-new "Grosvenor," but insisted OF
being carried to one of the old fashioned
inns. We found large house with it,
traditional landlady" in the bar, anC
were shown into waiting room while
our parlor was made ready. This proved
to be large apartment furnished in 9
comfortable, home-like way, with the
same sort of furniture that would have
been found in an ordinary English house
Il mean, there was nothing in the room
that suggested it had been furnished on
contract. When dinner time came, We
found the table laid in our own parlor
the waiter and his boy in black coats
white neckcloths, and white cotton
gloves, and the table set like ones own
and differing in no respect, not even in
the quality of the furniture, from what
one often saw afterward in England al
the tables of very good people. We had
ordered our dinner beforehand, the land
lady having come up aud asked us what
we would like, very civilly, and kindly
helping us to choose, so that when We
sat down, the tiresome waiter we had left
three thousand miles away, with his
skipping alterations from freezing neg
lect to pushing obsequiousness, and his
bill-er-fare" with its chaos come again,
and its damnable iteration, were a for
gotten nightmare, and the dinner was a
foretaste of Paradise. l remember that
after dinner when the dessert was Set
the cloth being actually removed and the
old mohogany revealed,-the waiter, in
putting on the table some handsome old
Worcester plates (made in the days when
there was a Worcester that had something
better to do than making bad copies OF
japanese perfections), whispered that
"Mrs. -, thinking we might like, as
Americans, to see some old china, had
sent these up" and how was it possible
after that to feel that we were in a hotel
The surprise was reserved, however, for
bedtime, when, on going to our chamber,
we found small fire flickering cheer
fully in the crate, the candles lighted,
the curtains of the four-post bedstead
drawn and the clothes turned down,
while Oh one side of the room, placed
upon cloth cf its own and with its own
towel-stand supplied with bath-towels,
was the welcome hot-bath, an English
gift to the world worth all the sewing
machines and steam engines that were
ever invented. Here was comfortable
lap of fortune to have fallen into, and
we hummed with DIR. johnson tho:c lines
of Shenstone that no home staying
American Cat least, since the good old
days of Bunkers y can ever understand
the sense OF:
Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn!
Among my "reminiscences of travel, l
do not know of any sharper contrast
than between this comfortable inn at
Chester and the hotel we went to OH ar
irving in New York-one of the three or
four first class hotels; for, whereas in
Europe no one who is merely after COM
fort, and not after snowy way of spend
ing money. ever goes in a city to the
first class hotels, here at home it is never
safe to 60 to any other. At this hotel
we were shown into big bare room, con-
tanning Just what was necessary for de-
cent livipg-a carpet, bed, a bureau, a
looking-glass, a table and four chairs,
with the inevitable furnace-hole in the
wall, the gasburner, where no one could
use it in dressing, and the washbasin in
the narrow closet-a scientific desolation
(your room being exactly like every
other in the caravansary) which VIC
Americans have carried to perfection
At dinner, we sat in the we'll lighted,
handsomely proportioned dining-hall
and fed with the multitude-the gentle,
man in front of us enjoying his ice cream
water-melons, peaches, and coffee all al
once-he at the tail of the carte while
we were at the head. Yet for all this
bare and bleak discomfort, we paid faI
more than for the English hospitality.