Extravagant Waste in Restaurants and Hotels.
WILLIAM ARCHER, a Scotchman, has the following to say in regard to his impression of living in hotels and restaurants while traveling in this country, and his statements incidentally show the careless and wantonly wasteful habits and tendencies of the time: \u201cI am too much of a Scot to take any real pleasure in American luxury. It produces an odd effect on the habitually economical soul. You do not feel that you are being robbed and fleeced as you often do in European hotels\u2014that you are paying extortionate prices for little or nothing. However high the charges, you generally recognize that you are getting your money's worth\u2014that there can be no excessive margin of profit. Only you are getting, and you can not avoid getting, far more of everything than you want\u2014far more than the healthy human appetite has any use for.5\u201cIn the restaurants, for example, the army of waiters is imposing, every dish is served in Gargantuan quantities, and all the 'frills' of table service are elaborated to the last degree. But the resultant feeling is not one of satisfaction, but rather of wanton waste in service and in material. \u201cIt is significant that in the bedrooms there are none of those expostulations against waste of (say) electricity which are so common in European hotels. I can, if I please, keep eight electric lamps burning day and night without remonstrance. The charges are fixed so high as to cover all possible waste short of absolute destruction. \u201cI do not know but what this sense of waste is more exasperating to the canny soul than the sense of extortion. And yet, assuredly, I have seen nothing to indicate that the gospel of the simple life has found many converts in New York City.\u201d T.