Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-11-01
remarkable case Of disappearance and re-
appearance ever heard Of

remarkable case Of disappearance and re-
appearance I ever heard Of
"Next to the labor of travelling the bete
noir Of the one night stand company is the
country hotels. The best hotels in the far
West are finer and better than the best in
the East. You will find hotels in Tacoma,
Duluth, Spokane Falls and a few other
places equal to the best New York host
elries but when you come to less enter
prising and smaller towns you strike some
of the worst hotels. in my opinion, that
ever existed.
SLEEPING OUT IN A SHED.
cat Fargo had the worst experience in
the hotel line. All the good houses were
full and cots in the halls. With two other
members Of the company I was forced to go
to frame shanty where we had single
candle, bed with plenty of bugs and no
breakfast to speak Of 1 passed horrible
night. There was another similar place
gas, and water was exceedingly scarce,
Judging by the looks of the people who sat
in the vicinity at the dinner table. On nv
right was tall tobacco fend, with red
necktie and freckled face, who picked his
nose at the table. Another star boarder,
and favorite Of the house, was one of the
'Goldarn' sort, who wore a gray flannel
shirt, without any coat or vest, at the din
ner table, and who had evidently lost some
member of his family, as his fnger-nails
were in deep mourning.
CAT the Windsor Hotel in Butte, Mont,
everything was Chinese. The walters were
Chinese, the cooks were Chinese, the loafers
were Chinese. There was one exception
and he was the handsome porter with big
mustache, who, when inquired for laun-
dry not Chinese, insisted on taking me to
one himself with carriage. I was forced
to decline the courtesy, and afterward
found that the place was only three blocks
away.
BoUNTIFUL WITH THEIR HAM.
'Hotel fare? Ham is a standard dish
when you get west of the Mississippi,
though they usually have good beef Fried
ham, stewed ham, baked ham, smoked ham,
deyiled ham, boiled ham, roast ham, and all
other kinds Of ham that you ever thought
Of Chicken and eggs are rarity. If you
ask the waiter for chicken in some of these
places it will almost paralyze her. The
walters are usually women when they are
not Chinese. The airs they put on would
make a New York lunch room girl turn
green. In California and all along the
wine at every meal Taken as whole the
far Western hotels have plenty to eat, badly
cooked. while the Eastern country hotels
have poorer food, better cooked.
'In the country some of the so-called
theaters were plain wooden boxes with
windows in them, and styled opera houses.
The worse the theater the more grandilo-
quent the name. Very often they had no
orchestra. At one place, town called Sa-
lem, had to come down from the stage and
play the piano alongside of our director
with his violin. We had a splendid house
and the people laughed at everything. They
had drop curtain there full of advertising.
This form of drop curtain is very often
used in the far West. The footlights were
frequently coal oil lights and smoked horri-
middle of the performance, and one of the
actors broke off his dialogue and walked
down to the front and relighted them, when
the play proceeded.
CHARLES THEODORE MUK1Ax