In America there is too often
nothing ready but iced water--an ungenial overture to any feast--and you
must wait until your order has been taken. Other travellers, even
Americans, have agreed with me that it would be more comfortable if the
convention which decrees that the waiter shall bring everything together
could be overruled. Something "to go on with" is a great ameliorative,
especially when one is hungry and tired.
In thus commending American hotels over English it is, however, only
right to admit that the American hotels are very much more expensive.
While on the subject of eating, I would say that for all their notorious
freedoms Americans have a better sense of order than we. Their policemen
may carry their batons drawn, and even swing them with a certain
insolent defiance or even provocation, but New York goes on its way with
more precision and less disturbance than London, and every one is
smarter, more alert. The suggestion of a living wage for all is
constant. It is indeed on this sense of orderliness that the success of
certain of the American time-saving appliances is built. The Automat
restaurants, for example, where the customer gets all his requirements
himself, would never do in London. The idea is perfect; but it requires
the co-operation of the customer, and that is what we should fail to
provide. The spotless cleanliness and mechanical exactitude of these
places in New York would cease in London, and gradually they would
decline and then disappear.
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