The increased intercourse with this country is evidently producing a most improving effect in many of the necessary and unmentionable comforts of this civilized age, which you find to predominate chiefly in those cities that have most direct intercourse with us; but as you go further west, these comforts are most disagreeably deficient.  One point in which the hotels fail universally is attendance; it is their misfortune, not their fault; for the moment a little money is realized by a servant, he sets up in some business, or migrates westward.  The consequence is, that the field of service is left almost entirely to the Irish and the negro, and between the two—­after nearly a year’s experience thereof—­I am puzzled to say in whose favour the balance is.

I remember poor Paddy, one morning, having answered the Household Brigade man’s bell, was told to get some warm water.  He went away, and forgot all about it.  Of course, the bell rang again; and, on Paddy answering it, he was asked—­

“Did I not tell you to get me some warm water?”

“You did, your honour.”

“Then, why have you not brought it?”

“Can’t tell, your honour.”

“Well, go and get it at once.”

Paddy left the room, and waited outside the door scratching his head.  In about a quarter of an hour a knock was heard:—­

“Come in!”

Paddy’s head appeared, and, with a most inquiring voice, he said—­

“Is it warm water to dhrink you want, your honour?” Ex uno, &c.

Another inconvenience in their hotels is the necessity of either living at the public table, or going to the enormous expense of private rooms; the comfort of a quiet table to yourself in a coffee-room is quite unknown.  There is no doubt that sitting down at a table-d’hote is a ready way to ascertain the manners, tone of conversation, and, partly, the habits of thought, of a nation, especially when, as in the United States, it is the habitual resort of everybody; but truth obliges me to confess that, after a very short experience of it, I found the old adage applicable, “A little of it goes a great way;” and I longed for the cleanliness, noiselessness, and comfort of an English coffee-room, though its table be not loaded with equal variety and profusion.

The American system is doubtless the best for the hotelkeeper, as there are manifest advantages in feeding masses at once, over feeding the same number in detail.  A mess of twenty officers, on board a man-of-war, will live better on two pounds each a month than one individual could on three times that sum.  It is the want of giving this difference due consideration which raises, from time to time, a crusade against the hotels at home, by instituting comparisons with those of the United States.  If people want to have hotels as cheap as they are in America, they must use them as much, and submit to fixed hours and a mixture of every variety of cultivation of mind and cleanliness