eat is one of an American citizen's dearest privileges, and a right he
will most unwillingly relinquish. He may know as well as you and I do,
that what he calls for will not be worth eating; that is of secondary
importance, he has it before him, and is contented."

"The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty of its guests to the
extent of serving them a _table d'hote_ dinner, would be emptied in a
week."

"A crowning incongruity, as most people are delighted to dine with
friends, or at public functions, where the meal is invariably served _a
la russe_ (another name for a _table d'hote_), and on these occasions are
only too glad to have their _menu_ chosen for them. The present way,
however, is a remnant of 'old times' and the average American, with all
his love of change and novelty, is very conservative when it comes to his
table."

What this manager did not confide to me, but what I discovered later for
myself, was that to facilitate the service, and avoid confusion in the
kitchens, it had become the custom at all the large and most of the small
hotels in this country, to carve the joints, cut up the game, and portion
out vegetables, an hour or two before meal time. The food, thus
arranged, is placed in vast steam closets, where it simmers gayly for
hours, in its own, and fifty other vapors.

Any one who knows the rudiments of cookery, will recognize that with this
system no viand can have any particular flavor, the partridges having a
taste of their neighbor the roast beef, which in turn suggests the plum
pudding it has been "chumming" with.

It is not alone in a hotel that we miss the good in grasping after the
better. Small housekeeping is apparently run on the same lines.

A young Frenchman, who was working in my rooms, told me in reply to a
question regarding prices, that every kind of food was cheaper here than
abroad, but the prejudice against certain dishes was so strong in this
country that many of the best things in the markets were never called
for. Our nation is no longer in its "teens" and should cease to act like
a foolish boy who has inherited (what appears to him) a limitless
fortune; not for fear of his coming, like his prototype in the parable,
to live on "husks" for he is doing that already, but lest like the dog of
the fable, in grasping after the shadow of a banquet he miss the simple
meal that is within his reach.

One of the reasons for this deplorable state of affairs lies in th