The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1891-06-11

cream. In driving nails with the sauce
some one had Clipped out mouthfal o
the rich china, and now the half melte(
i mayonnaise ice cream was running out o
\ that notch. There were little Jumps o
butter In this ice cream, silver CLOS
starch, berga1not and circumstantial evi
dence that the proprietor cleaned th'
lamps every morning before he made thu
ice cream for the day.
paid two bits for the cream. and re
manned watching the little child in tht
store to see that its nose did not run
away with it while the proprietor weni
out to the fair grounds to get change fol
a dollar. I 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- TegIe
business has to be looked after. Itwould
not do to run a 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 a throbbing advertisement for
good or i'll. He will damn q hotel on
dining car in ten days SO that, unless the
proprietor has married well, he viii be
canvassing for snide family medical
work inside of month. When I began
to travel went to such hotels as my
able New York manager sent mo to.
Sometimes he sent me to hotel that
had been burned two months. Some
times he sent me to a hotel, that had be-
come morally little rancid under q
new proprietor. Once he sent me to an
inn which had its name in the hotel
directory, and when got there I found
that it was a saloon with an annex
consisting of a room in which the bar
tender filed away such customers as
could not be shipped home.
Now, however, simply get my eye on
good looking sample case and follow it
from the depot. I find that I do not
make any mistakes. A travelling man
generally is a good conversatio and
IL you listen to him you viii notice that
when not doing up hotel he is doing up
a railroad or a dining car, and he is gen.
orally on the right side of the question
too.r believe that the press and the
commercial men together can do and
have done good deal toward elevating
the standard of American hotel cooking.
And yet there is good deal of room for
improvement. --s.---s--------- $500
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 slot
machine. There used to be a chance to
make the price of two drinks out Of a
bottle of whisky, but a keen young
Jay Gould of special agent discovered
that there were twelve drinks to the bot
tie instead of ten. He was promoted, and
the 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
it on the other; while the prettier ladies
are waiting anxiously to primp while
the uglier ones are monopolizing the
primping facilities and replacing their
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 a |
sweet smelling diner, and looking out |
over the velyety meads where the TOM
tit greets the jocund morn, that 1900
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.