Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1907-03-09
RIGHT UP TO DATE
MODERN HOTEL AsToNIsHED
DELAWARE FARMERS.
Accustomed to Simplicity of Country
Inns, They Marveied at the Rich
ness DispIayed-Course Din
ner Especially Puzzling.

One of Delaware's senators is known
q, good many persons in rural parts
of the state from the fact that a hotel
at Dover bears his name The father
of the senator astOnished Delaware
about quarter of a century ago by
starting a hotel on the modern plan,
the first of the kind that Dover had
ever had and the only one of the kind
that many visitors to the capital had
seen.
When first opened the house was a
matter of the utmost curiosity to Wis
itors. Rural legislators and their
friends looked with establishment at
its thicEly carpeted halls, its many
bathrooms, its heating arrangements,
its electric bells, it's lights and all it's
modern conyeniences.
Hardest of all to understand was
the hotel dining-room. Instead of one
or two long tables it had provision for
seating guests in groups of two, three,
four or more.
This, however, was the smallest in
nOvation of the hotel dining room.
Farmers accustomed to drive to town
with a feed of oats in the wagon for
their horses and to dine at the general
table of a small inn at a price some
times as low as % cents, never above
half a dollar, heard with sceptical
establishment of the doings at the new
hotel. The dinner was served, they
learned, in as many as six courses,
with cheese at the end that smelled
dreadful and coffee without milk in
little cups that did not hold more than
two thimblefuls.
Some of the farmers sneaked in
shame-facedly and tried that dinner,
which, of course, was served at mid
day The experience of having fish
served as a separate course immedi-
ately after the soup was alarming, for
some feared that there might be moth
ing else to come.
Then those queer made dishes that
came after the fish were puzzling. 1t
was only when the roast came on with
the familiar vegetables that the farm
ers began to feel themselves at home,
and even then the shifting of plates
and knives was embarrassing. They
bill for dishwashing.
Some noticed that a few guests had
wine bottles at their places, and at
this the farmers from the back coun-
try shook their heads, and wondered
what Delaware was coming to. 1t was
all well enough for man to slip into
the barroom and gulp glass of whisky
alone, or with a friend if he happened
to be thirsty, but this thing of drink
ing wine with your meals was a bad
sign.
When the dessert time came every
body ordered everything on the bill
of fare, as, indeed, the farmers had
mostly all the way through the meal
but the cheese was sent away i'll haste
untasted, and there was a firm de-
mand early in the course of the dinner
for coffee in large cups with milk
There was a good deal of grumbling
when it was found that, eat as fast as
man might, he could hardly get
through the dinner in less than half
an hour, and much surprise was ex-
pressed that some of the guests sat
the better part of an hour at table.
Those farmers who were not too
much ashamed of what they had done
went home and told their wives about
that dinner. The foolish extravaganza
of the blamed thing, especially in the
matter of plates and cutlery, was
what impressed the popular magma
ton.
News of the thing travelled all over
the state. There were hotels like that
up at Wilmington everybody had
heard, where you could get your din
ner as late as two o'clock in the after
noon; but nobody expected such an
institution to be set up at Dover. The
senator's name has for years been con-
spicuous in business, but to many of
his constituents it connotes first of all
that new-fangled hotel