Americans at Table.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 328, 26 December 1888, Page 3

Americans at Table.

By J. C. Firth.

The American hotel S3'stem gives you many a curious study. The great hotel, with its thousand rooms, its mavblefioors, its elegant parqueterie, its elevators, its mirroru, its handsome dining-halls, its liberal menus, or bills of fare, is the very abode of luxurious life. In these great hotels children grow into girls, girls into women, in absolute ignorance of household affairs, knowing less of cookery than an Indian squaw. To such people 4 home life ' is an enigma and a nuisance. Hundreds of people •ongregato in the gieal dining halls at breakfast, dinner, or supper, around small tables, each laid out for frix or eight guests. It is dinner. A black attendant escorts you to your table. After awhile your appointed • waiter,' with silent dignity, fills a large goblet with iced water. Your black attendant having thus provided for your wants, leaves you to sip the cold liquid afc your leisure. "Whether drinking iced water in a temperature of 90deg. Fahr. is injurious nobody cares ; it is pleasant and ao nice, then why bother about dyspepsia or indigestion ? After ten minutes or so your waiter flits round your table, placing at proper points several little dishes about the sizo of a dollar or crown piece. This done, ho leaves you for a short interval. By this time your American vis-a-vis has emptied his goblet, and is engaged looking at nothing, bub undoubtedly becoming, by constant practice at table, a very patient person. Once more your sable servitor surrounds your table, passing before you with silent grace a menu elegantly tinted in pale pink, blue, green, or primrose, containing a list, say, of forty dishes. Having submitted this important document, he leaves you to ponder over its contents in peace. If you are a Colonist or an Englishman of simple tastes, you make your selection promptly and ,wait for the waiter. After a proper interval your polite attendant, once move approaches, and circulates round your table as before. Twenty minutes have passed since you took your seat in the palatial dining hall. You have emptied your goblet long ago, and have been, amusing yourself at intervals with grapes or peaches, or Iheir frequent) substitute, water melons. Two hundred people, have