ou'll be
charged a good price for bad accommodation: and the larger the
establishment, the smaller is your chance of escaping imposition. If you
order a light dinner, you may be sure, nevertheless, you'll have to pay
a heavy price for it. If wine be your beverage, you'll be charged three
and sixpence for a glass and a half of Cape, served in a vinegar-cruet
and called "a pint of Sherry:" or, if you drink beer, you will get a jug
of what it were a bitter raillery to call bitter ale, and which, however
nasty, you'll be charged a nice sum for. So that, in either case, the
process of selling these liquids may be said invariably to include the
purchaser. Your candles, too, they say, which figure so highly as "wax"
in the bill, will prove in the candlestick to be as bad a composition as
the fourpence in the pound of a fraudulent bankrupt: and whether lit or
not, there's still the burning shame that you're to pay just the same
for them. For "attendance," too, you are charged about as much as for a
lawyer's: half-a-crown a day being no uncommon item for the luxury of
sometimes looking at a waiter. And if you want a horse, you'll find
there's not one in the stable but what's made a heavy charger.

Another of their complaints is, that in the fitting up of our hotels
there is as much bad taste as in the wines you cannot drink there. For,
while the second-class houses are barely half-furnished, those which are
anomalously styled "first-rate" are as much over-done as the victims who
frequent them, all the rooms being crammed to every corner with a lot of
ugly furniture, for which nevertheless you've to pay pretty handsomely.

In short, the British Innkeeper, as these writers represent him, figures
as a sort of human apteryx, who supports himself entirely by the length
of his bill.

Now, the correctness of these charges we admit as readily as we dispute
the landlords'. At the same time, we think there is an evident excuse
for them; for the writers, in their vehemence, seem entirely to have
overlooked the fact, that inasmuch as every innkeeper is bound to keep
open house, he is obviously obliged to take as many people in as
possible.

* * * * *

[Illustration: MYSELF, AS I APPEARED ON PERUSING MY HOTEL BILL, HAVING
STAYED A NIGHT IN BRIGHTON.]

* * * * *

A LITTLE MONEY QUESTION.

"OH, DEAR PUNCH, DEAR,

"I want to ask you one little question. It is about 'defaci