 |
The
Hotel and Boarding House
| "The American Inn... is altogether an institution apart,
a thing of itself. Hotels in America are very much larger and
more numerous than in other countries. They are to be found
in all towns, and I may almost say in all villages...In the
States of America the first sign of an incipient settlement
is an hotel five stories high, with an office, a bar, a cloak
room, three gentlemen's parlours, two ladies' parlours, a ladies'
entrance, and two hundred bedrooms". |
|
Anthony Trollope, North America,
1863
|
| "You enter the hotel and silently sign your
name in the guest book. Next to your name they silently write
the number of the room you will occupy, and silently hand the
key to a Negro. He by innate talkativeness interrupts the silence,
takes the traveling bags and guides you to the assigned room" |
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Aleksadandr Borisovich Lakier,
1857
|
| "One is in a free country, yet in an American inn, one
can never do as one likes. A terrific gong sounds early in the
morning, breaking one's sweet slumbers, and then a second gong
sounding some thirty minutes later, makes you understand that
you must proceed to breakfast, whether you be dressed or no.
You certainly can go on with your toilet and obtain your meal
after half an hour's delay. Nobody actually scolds you you for
so doing, but the breakfast is, as they say in this country,
'through'. They begrudge you no amount that you can eat or drink;
but they begrudge you a single moment that you sit neither eating
nor drinking. This is your fate if you're too late, and therefore
as a general rule you are not late." |
|
Anthony Trollope, North America,
1863
|
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