s
restaurants in all the larger cities; but elsewhere the traveller will
do well to stick to the meals at his hotel. The best restaurants are
often in the hands of Germans, Italians, or Frenchmen. This is
conspicuously so at New York. Delmonico's has a worldwide reputation,
and is undoubtedly a good restaurant; but it may well be questioned
whether the New York estimate of its merits is not somewhat excessive.
If price be the criterion, it has certainly few superiors. The _a la
carte_ restaurants are, indeed, all apt to be expensive for the single
traveller, who will find that he can easily spend eight to twelve
shillings on a by no means sumptuous meal. The French system of
supplying one portion for two persons or two portions for three is,
however, in vogue, and this diminishes the cost materially. The _table
d'hote_ restaurants, on the other hand, often give excellent value for
their charges. The Italians have especially devoted themselves to this
form of the art, and in New York and Boston furnish one with a very
fair dinner indeed, including a flask of drinkable Chianti, for four
or five shillings. At some of the simple German restaurants one gets
excellent German fare and beer, but these are seldom available for
ladies. The fair sex, however, takes care to be provided with more
elegant establishments for its own use, to which it sometimes admits
its husbands and brothers. The sign of a large restaurant in New York
reads: "Women's Cooeperative Restaurant; tables reserved for
gentlemen," in which I knew not whether more to admire the
uncompromising antithesis between the plain word "women" and the
complimentary term "gentlemen" or the considerateness that supplies
separate accommodation for the shrinking creatures denoted by the
latter. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to note that it is
usually as unwise to patronise a restaurant which professedly caters
for "gents" as to buy one's leg-coverings of a tailor who knows them
only as "pants." Probably the "adult gents' bible-class," which
Professor Freeman encountered, was equally unsatisfactory.

Soup, poultry, game, and sweet dishes are generally as good as and
often better than in English restaurants. Beef and mutton, on the
other hand, are frequently inferior, though the American porterhouse
and other steaks sometimes recall English glories that seem largely
to have vanished. The list of American fish is by no means identical
with that of Europe, and some of