It is the habit of my companion and myself, when visiting strange
cities, to ask for interesting eating-places of one sort or another. In
Baltimore there seems to be no choice but to take meals in
hotels--unless one may wish to go to the Dutch Tea room or the Woman's
Exchange for a shoppers' lunch, and to see (in the latter establishment)
great numbers of ladies sitting upon tall stools and eating at a
lunch-counter--a somewhat curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither
pleasing to the eye nor thrilling to the senses.

The nearest thing to "character" which I found in a Baltimore
eating-place was at an establishment known as Kelly's Oyster House, a
place in a dark quarter of the town. It had the all-night look about it,
and the negro waiters showed themselves not unacquainted with certain of
the city's gilded youth. Kelly's is a sort of southern version of
"Jack's"--if you know Jack's. But I don't think Jack's has any flight of
stairs to fall down, such as Kelly's has.

The dining rooms of the various hotels are considerably used, one
judges, by the citizens of Baltimore. The Kernan Hotel, which we visited
one night after the theater, looked like Broadway. Tables were crowded
together and there was dancing between them--and between mouthfuls. So,
too, at the Belvedere, which is used considerably by Baltimore's gay
and fashionable people.

My companion and I stayed at the Belvedere and found it a good hotel,
albeit one which has, I think, become a shade too well accustomed to
being called good. Perhaps because of a city ordinance, perhaps because
the waiters want to go to bed, they have a trick, in the Belvedere
dining-room, during the cold weather, of opening the windows and