American hotels, even when otherwise good, are apt to be noisier than European ones.  The servants have little idea of silence over their work, and the early morning chambermaids crow to one another in a way that is very destructive of one’s matutinal slumbers.  Then somebody or other seems to crave ice-water at every hour of the day or night, and the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the ice-pitcher in the corridors becomes positively nauseous when one wants to go to sleep.  The innumerable electric bells, always more or less on the go, are another auditory nuisance.

While we are on the question of defects in American hotels, it should be noticed that the comfortable little second-class inns of Great Britain are practically unknown in the United States.  The second-class inns there are run on the same lines as the best ones; but in an inferior manner at every point.  The food is usually as abundant, but it is of poorer quality and worse cooked; the beds are good enough, but not so clean; the table linen is soiled; the sugar bowls are left exposed to the flies from week-end to week-end; the service is poor and apt to be forward; and (last, but not least) the manners of the other guests are apt to include a most superfluous proportion of tobacco-chewing, expectorating, an open and unashamed use of the toothpick, and other little amenities that probably inflict more torture on those who are not used to them than would decorous breaches of the Decalogue.

In criticising American hotels, it must not be forgotten that the rapid process of change that is so characteristic of America operates in this sphere with especial force.  This is at work a distinct tendency to substitute the subdued for the gaudy, the refined for the meretricious, the quiet for the loud; and even now the cultured American who knows his monde may spend a great part of his time in hotels without conspicuously lowering the tone of his environment.

The prevalent idea that the American hotel clerk is a mannerless despot is, me judice, rather too severe.  He is certainly apt to be rather curt in his replies and ungenial in his manner; but this is not to be wondered at when one reflects under what a fire of questions he stands all day long and from week to week; and, besides, he does generally give the information that is wanted.  That he should wear diamond studs and dress gorgeously is not unnatural when one considers the social stratum from which he is drawn.  Do not our very cooks the same as far as they can?  That he should somewhat magnify the importance of his office is likewise explicable; and, after all, how many human beings have greater power over the actual personal comforts of the fraction of the world they come into contact with?  I can, however, truthfully boast that I met hotel clerks who, in moments of relief from pressure, treated me almost as an equal, and one or two who seemed actually disposed to look on me as a friend.  I certainly never