The Republican journal., 1876-11-09
English Inns and American Hotels.

! a friend writes; shall never forget, when
| remembering the minor pleasures of my visit
| to England. my first experience of an Sim"
| We went directly to Chester, and, to the dis
! gust of the porters, declined to go where, be-
| Ing evidently gentry" we should have gone
| by instinct-to the elegant spc-and-span, bran
new "Grosvenor," but insisted on being carried
| to one of the od-tashioned inns We found
| large house with its traditional "andady" i'll
| the bar. and were shown into waiting-room
| while our parlOrW made ready. This proved
| to be large apartment furnished in comfort
! able, home-like way, with the same sort of fur
niture that would have been found in an ordl-
| nary English house, mean there was nothing
| in the room that suggested it had been furnish
! ed ION contract" When dinner time came, we
| found the table laid i'll our own parOr, the
waiter and his boy in black coats, white neck
cloths, 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 at the
tables of very good people. We had ordered
our dinner beforehand. the landlady having
come up and asked us what we would like,
very ciYilly, and kindly helping Us to choose
so that when We sat down, the tresome waiter
we had left three thousand miles away, with
his skipping alterations from freezing neglect
to pushing obsequiOusneSs, and his "blll-er-
fare with its chaos come again, and its dam
nable iteration, were a forgotten nightmare,
and the dinner was a foretaste of Paradise |
remember that after dinner when the desert
was set, the cloth being actually removed and
the Old mahogany reyealed-the waiter, in put
ting on the table some handsome old Worcester
plates (made in the days when there was
Worcester that had something better TO do
than making bad copies of Japanese pertec-
tiOns) whispered that Mrs. -, thinking
we might like, as Americans, to some Old
china, had sent these up and how was ii pos
Sbe after tnat to feel that we We're in a hotel:
The SUI prise was reserved however, for bed
time. when, on going 10 our chamber, we found
Il slnaIl fire fickering chcertuIly in the CRATE,
The candies lighted, the curtains of the four
post bedstead drawn and the clothes turned
down, while at one side of the room, placed
upon a cloth of its own and with it, own towel
stand supplied with bath-towelS, was the well
come hot-bath, an English gift to the world
worth all the sewing machines and steam-en-
gineS that were ever invented. Here was
comfortable lap Of fortune TO have fallen into,
and we hummed with Dr. johnson those lines
OF NhCnStOne that no hOme-st.ying American
tai least, since the good Old days of Bun
ErrS"'l can ever understand the sense Of
"Whoe'cr has Travelled lfe'- duh round
Whcro'er his stages may have BEEN
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome ut an inn"
Among the "reminiscences of travel, do not
know of any sharper contrast than between
this comfortable inn At Chester and the hotel
we went to on arriving ut New York-one of
the three or rOur " tirSt-cluSs" hotels; Tor,
whereas in Europe no one who is merely after
comfort, ana not after u snowy way Of spend
iug money, ever goes in a city to the ;ii>t-CllSS
hotels here at home it is never safe 10 go to
any other. At this hotel we were shown into
4 big bare room, containing Just what was nee
cssury for decent lvng-a carpet, bed, 4 but
reau, Il looking glass, Il table and four chairs.
with the inevitable furnacc-holc in the wall.
the gas-burncr, where no one could use it in
dressing, and the Wl>h-basin in the narrow
clo>et-a scientific deSolaton (your room being
exactly like every other IN the caravansary)