a
which many have of the French _batterie de cuisine_, but the
before-mentioned fact is more often the case than not.

Occasionally, on the tourist-track, there is a "show hotel," like the
Hotel du Grand Cerf at Louviers (its catering in this case is none
the worse for its being a "show-place," it may be mentioned) where
all the theatrical picturesqueness of the imagination may be seen.
There is the timbered sixteenth-century house-front, the heavily
beamed, low ceiling of the _cuisine_, the great open-fire chimney
with its _broche_, and all the brave showing of pots and pans,
brilliant with many scrubbings of _eau de cuivre_, to present quite
the ideal picture of its kind to be seen in France--without leaving
the highroads and searching out the "real thing" in the byways.

On the other hand, in the same bustling town, is the Mouton d'Argent,
equally as excellent in its catering (perhaps more so), where the
kitchen is about the most up-to-date thing imaginable, with a modern
range, mechanical egg-beaters, etc. This last is nothing very
wonderful to an American, but is remarkable in France, where the
average cook usually does the work quite as efficiently with a
two-tined fork, or something which greatly resembles a chop-stick.

In the _cuisine_ electric lights are everywhere, but the
up-to-dateness here stops abruptly; the _salle a manger_ is bare and
uninviting, and the rooms above equally so, and the electric light
has not penetrated beyond the ground floor. Instead one finds ranged
on the mantel, above the cook-stove in the kitchen, a regiment of
candlesticks, in strange contrast to the rest of the furnishings.
Electric bells, too, are wanting, and there is still found the row of
jangling _grelots_, their numbers half-obliterated, hanging above the
great doorway leading to the courtyard.

The European waiter is never possessed of that familiarity of speech
with those he serves, which the American negro waiter takes for
granted is his birthright. It's all very well to have a
cheerful-countenanced waiter bobbing about behind one's chair, indeed
it's infinitely more inspiring than such of the old brigade of
mutton-chopped English waiters as still linger in some of London's
City eating-houses, but the disposition of the coffee-coloured or
coal-black negro to talk to you when you do not want to be talked to
should be suppressed.

The genuine French, German, or Swiss waiter of hotel, restaurant, or
cafe is neither t