Perilous balancing feats and a high degree of skill were evidently
demanded of him who would journey _en cacolet_. Requiring thus a special
training, so to speak, as well as a nice equivalence in weight between
passenger and driver difficult to always realize, its use is not likely
to supersede that of wheeled vehicles. To take a ride _en cacolet_, one
might have a long hunt before finding a driver who should be his proper
counterpoise; and it would be often inconvenient, not to say
impracticable, thus to have to order one's driver according to measure.

It is the evening dining-hour as we find ourselves at last in the open
court-yard of our hotel and seek the welcoming light of its _salle_. The
hotels of Biarritz are handsome, even to elegance,--elegance which seems
wasted on the few people now in them. But numbers do not seem to affect
the anxious concern of Continental hotel-keepers. The same elaborate and
formal table-d'hôte is served for our small company and a few others, as
will, later on, be prepared for a houseful of guests. The waiters don
the same ducal costume and with it the same grave decorum; and our
attendant Ganymede, bending respectfully to present his laden salver,
watches my selection of a portion of the pullet with as anxious
solicitude as could be shown by the mother hen herself. The solemnity of
a table-d'hôte, and the silencing effect it has on the most talkative,
is invariable, as it is inexplicable, and accents sharply the contrast
with the breezy clatter of the American summer hotel dining-hall. This
is not to say that either is, in all ways, to be preferred. Each in its
own setting. There is a comforting stir and whir about the great, bare,
sociable dining-hall at Crawford's or at the Grand Union, which causes a
European table-d'hôte utterly to pale and dwindle. And there is a
satisfying quiet, a self-respecting, ritualistic calm, in the frescoed
salle-a-manger of the Schweizerhof, or of the Grand Hotel at Biarritz,