Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1891-05-04

have an Office up town.
The man wore nice long salmon col
ored whiskers and celluloid collar. He
wiped off the top of tine table with an
all-purpose dust cloth, and put tall
goblet of rain water near me. Then he
went away, possibly to neighbours.
and returned with an iron spoon with
silver freckles on it. Afterward he
brought in cake basket containing
property cake. You have seen it. 1t
would look well enough in photograph,
but would give an ordinary stomach
heart disease.
Then came a porous towel, or napkin,
and thick saucer of granulated ice
cream. In driving nails with the saucer
some one had Clipped out mouthful of
the rich china, and now the half melted
mayonnaise ice cream was running out of
that notch. There were little Jumps of
butter in this ice cream, silver gloss
starch, bergamot and circumstantial evil
dence that the proprietor cleaned the
lamps every morning before he made the
ice cream for the day.
! paid two bits for the cream, and re-
manned watching the little child in the
store to see that its nose did not run
away with it while the proprietor went
out to the fair grounds to get change for
q dollar. / do not care much for ice
cream since that.
But to return to the dining car. AS
said, not only the stock but the en- regle
business has to be looked after. Itwould
not do TO run dining car the way some
hotels are run. 1t would not only drive
people to drink. but it would drive them
over another railroad. The commercial
man is tnrobbing advertisement for
good or i'll. He will damn a hotel or
dining car in ten days so that, unless the
proprietor has married well, he will be
canvassing for snide family medical
work inside of a month. When l began
to travel l went to such hotels as nv
able New York manager sent me to.
Sometimes he sent me to hotel that
had been burned two months. Some
times he sent me to hotel that had be-
come morally little rancid under a
new proprietor. Once he sent me to an
inn which had its name in the hotel
directory, and when got there 1 found
that it was a saloon with an annex
consisting of room in which the bar
tender filed away such customers as
could not be shipped home.
Now, however, l simply get my eye on
a good looking sample case and follow it
rom the depot. l find that l do not
make any mistakes. A travelling man
generally is a good conversational, and
If you listen to him You will notice that
when not doing up hotel he is doing up
= railroad or q dining car, and he is gen.
orally on the right side Of the question
too. l believe that the press and the
commercial men together can do and
have done i good deal toward elevating
the standard of American hotel cooking.
And yet there is good deal of room for
improvement.
After every days run, or at the end OF
the trip, the dining car conductor counts
up his cash, looks over his checks, bal
ances cash, looks over his stock OF
liquors and checks up on that, and then
he begins to take stock in the kitchen.
The conductor told me that the chances
for stealing on dining car were about
as good as they are for robbing a slot
machine. There used to be n chance to
make the price Of two drinks out of a
bottle of whisky, but keen young
jay Gould of a special agent discovered
that there were twelve drinks TO the bot
tie instead of ten. He was promoted, and
tie last perquisite, even to the empty
bottle, was taken away from the con-
ductor.
Toward the end of the trip, while the
porter is brushing the dust earnestly off
the back OF one passenger and depositing
1t on the other; while the prettier ladies
are waiting anxiously to primp while
the uglier ones are monopohZing the
primping facilities and replacing their
travelling teeth with those they wear in
town, the perspiring conductor of the
dining car begins to check off, with the
aid of the cook, the entire list of sup
plies, embracing over 1000 articles, to
see what will have to be bought, so that
the requisition may go in at once.
No one thinks while calmly eating in
sweet smelling diner. and looking out
over the velvety meads where the tom
tit greets the jocund morn, that 4 200
articles are in stock, packed under the
floor beneath his feet or concealed about
the car, and that all these must be kept
in stock and in good shape all the time,
subject to the order OF guests.
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