f servitors is to call on them for service as
little as possible! The two dollars or more they pay at the hotel desk
for a day's domicile must be exclusively for the privilege of sitting in
a chair or sleeping in a bed. The moment they require the service of any
of the employees about the building, they are under a second obligation
to pay. And yet, hotels prate about their "hospitality." The Barbary
pirates were hospitable in the same way--after you paid the tribute!

HOW THE BOOKS HELP

"The Cyclopaedia of Social Usage" states the tipping obligation as
follows:

"In a large and fashionable hotel generous and widely diffused
gratuities are expected by the employees. The experienced
traveler usually distributes in gratuities a sum equal to ten
per cent. of the amount of the bill. It is customary when a
lengthy sojourn is made in an hotel or pension to tip the
chambermaid, the various waiters and the porter who does one's
boots, once in every week. Once in every fortnight the head
waiter's expectations should be satisfied, and where an elevator
boy and doorman are on duty, they, too, have claims on the purse
of the guest.

"In a fashionable European hotel the rule of tipping a franc a
week all around may safely be observed during a long stop. But
at the hour of departure something extra must be added to the
weekly franc, and the head waiter will scarcely smile as blandly
as need be if he is not propitiated with gold."

Others, the writer says, have claims that it is well to recognize and
meet before they urge them.

Practically all the books on etiquette have the same note of
subserviency to the custom. The point to be remembered is that, without
being conscious of it, these writers are in league with the
beneficiaries of the custom to perpetuate and extend it. Most of the
authors think the custom is right, they have the aristocratic viewpoint
that servants should "know their place" and, in a republic, be made to
acknowledge it by accepting a gratuity. Others simply take conditions as
they find them and write to inform readers how to avoid unpleasant
incidents. But regardless of the opinion of the writers on the ethics of
the custom, the books are one of the principal supports of the custom.

Leaving the hotel, and considering the tipping custom in its relation to
private hospitality, we find this advice in "Dame Curtesy's Book of
Etiquette":

"