The price at these hotels throughout the union is nearly always the same, viz., two and a half dollars a day, for which a bed-room is given and as many meals as the guest can contrive to eat. This is the price for chance guests. The cost to monthly boarders is, Ibelieve, not more than the half of this. Ten shillings a day, therefore, covers everything that is absolutely necessary, servants included; and this must be said in praise of these inns--that the traveler can compute his expenses accurately, and can absolutely bring them within that daily sum of ten shillings. This includes a great deal of eating, a great deal of attendance, the use of reading-room and smoking-room--which, however, always seem to be open to the public as well as to the guests--and a bed-room, with accommodation which is at any rate as good as the average accommodation of hotels in Europe. In the large Eastern towns baths are attached to many of the rooms. I always carry my own, and have never failed in getting water. It must be acknowledged that the price is very cheap. It is so cheap that I believe it affords, as a rule, no profit whatsoever. The profit is made upon extra charges, and they are higher than in any other country that I have visited.
They are so high that I consider traveling in America, for an Englishman with his wife or family, to be more expensive than traveling in any part of Europe. First in the list of extras comes that matter of the sitting-room, and by that for a man and his wife the whole first expense is at once doubled. The ordinary charge is five dollars, or one pound a day! A guest intending to stay for two or three weeks at a hotel, or perhaps for one week, may, by agreement, have this charge reduced. At one inn I stayed a fortnight, and having made no such agreement, was charged the full sum. I felt myself stirred up to complain, and did in that case remonstrate. I was asked how much I wished to have returned--for the bill had been paid--and the sum I suggested was at once handed to me. But even with such reduction, the price is very high, and at once makes the American hotel expensive. Wine also at these houses is very costly, and very bad. The usual price is two dollars (or eight shillings) a bottle. The people of the country rarely drink wine at dinner in the hotels. When they do so, they drink champagne; but their normal drinking is done separately, at the bar, chiefly before dinner, and at a cheap rate. "A drink," let it be what it may, invariably costs a dime, or five pence. But if you must have a glass of sherry with your dinner, it costs two dollars;for sherry does not grow into pint bottles in the States. But the guest who remains for two days can have his wine kept for him.
Washing also is an expensive luxury. The price of this is invariable, being always four pence for everything washed. Acambric handkerchief or muslin dress all come out at the same price.
For those who are cunning in the matter this may do very well; but for men and women whose cuffs and collars are numerous it becomes expensive. The craft of those who are cunning is shown, I think, in little internal washings, by which the cambric handkerchiefs are kept out of the list, while the muslin dresses are placed upon it.
I am led to this surmise by the energetic measures taken by the hotelkeepers to prevent such domestic washings, and by the denunciations which in every hotel are pasted up in every room against the practice. I could not at first understand why I was always warned against washing my own clothes in my own bed-room, and told that no foreign laundress could on any account be admitted into the house. The injunctions given on this head are almost frantic in their energy, and therefore I conceive that hotel-keepers find themselves exposed to much suffering in the matter. At these hotels they wash with great rapidity, sending you back your clothes in four or five hours if you desire it.
Another very stringent order is placed before the face of all visitors at American hotels, desiring them on no account to have valuable property in their rooms. I presume that there must have been some difficulty in this matter in bygone years; for in every State a law has been passed declaring that hotel-keepers shall not be held responsible for money or jewels stolen out of rooms in their houses, provided that they are furnished with safes for keeping such money and give due caution to their guests on the subject. The due caution is always given, but I have seldom myself taken any notice of it. I have always left my portmanteau open, and have kept my money usually in a traveling-desk in my room; but I never to my knowledge lost anything. The world, I think, gives itself credit for more thieves than it possesses. As to the female servants at American inns, they are generally all that is disagreeable. They are uncivil, impudent, dirty, slow--provoking to a degree. But Ibelieve that they keep their hands from picking and stealing.
