which we have been brought up to believe among the prime necessaries
of existence. It is significant that in the printed directions
governing the use of the electric bell in one's bedroom, I never found
an instance in which the harmless necessary bath could be ordered with
fewer than nine pressures of the button, while the fragrant cocktail
or some other equally fascinating but dangerous luxury might often be
summoned by three or four. The most elaborate dinner, served in the
most gorgeous china, is sometimes spoiled by the Draconian regulation
that it must be devoured between the unholy hours of twelve and two,
or have all its courses brought on the table at once. Though the
Americans invent the most delicate forms of machinery, their hoop-iron
knives, silver plated for facility in cleaning, are hardly calculated
to tackle anything harder than butter, and compel the beef-eater to
return to the tearing methods of his remotest ancestors. The waiter
sometimes rivals the hotel clerk himself in the splendour of his
attire, but this does not render more appetising the spectacle of his
thumb in the soup. The furniture of your bedroom would not have
disgraced the Tuileries in their palmiest days, but, alas, you are
parboiled by a diabolic chevaux-de-frise of steam-pipes which refuse
to be turned off, and insist on accompanying your troubled slumbers by
an intermittent series of bubbles, squeaks, and hisses. The mirror
opposite which you brush your hair is enshrined in the heaviest of
gilt frames and is large enough for a Brobdignagian, but the basin in
which you wash your hands is little larger than a sugar-bowl; and when
you emerge from your nine-times-summoned bath you find you have to dry
your sacred person with six little towels, none larger than a
snuff-taker's handkerchief. There is no carafe of water in the room;
and after countless experiments you are reduced to the blood-curdling
belief that the American tourist brushes his teeth with ice-water, the
musical tinkling of which in the corridors is the most characteristic