At a hotel, if the children come to the ladies’ table, they are always in danger of eating food that is highly improper for them, and they very soon learn to help themselves to much more than they want, and to eat voraciously, in their desire to “have something of every thing.” There is always a table purposely for those children whose parents pay half-price for them; and at which the housekeeper presides. However good this table may be, and though the pies and puddings may be excellent, the mothers are frequently dissatisfied with the absence of ice-cream, blanc-mange, charlotte-russe, &c., though certainly, were they in houses of their own, they would not have such things every day. Therefore, though it is “not in the bond,” the mothers carry away from the table saucers of these delicacies, and the children learn to expect a daily supply of them from the ladies’ dining-room. This, we must say, is a mean practice. We have, however, known some mothers, who, really being “honourable women,” sent every day to a confectioner’s to buy ice-cream for their children.
There is danger at a hotel of little boys loitering about the bar or office, encouraged by unthinking young men, who give them “tastes of drink,” and even amuse themselves by teaching them to smoke segars.
And no children, either boys or girls, can live at a public house without hearing and seeing much that it is best they should not know. The English travellers deprecate the American practice of bringing up young people in hotels or boarding-houses. And they are right.
When a lady, having with her a young child, and no nurse-maid, stops for a day at a hotel, she can avoid the inconvenience of taking the child with her to table, and incommoding herself and all who sit near her. She has only to entrust the little traveller to a chambermaid up-stairs; directing the girl how to take care of it, and promising her a gratuity for her trouble. She will rarely have cause to regret such an arrangement. It will spare the annoyance and mortification of having the child make a noise at table, and perhaps compelling the mother to go away with it.
CHAPTER XXIII.
DECORUM IN CHURCH.
We wish it were less customary to go to church in gay and costly habiliments, converting its sacred precincts into a place for the display of finery, and of rivalry to your equally bedizened neighbours. In many Catholic countries,[[17]] a peculiar costume is universally adopted for visiting a place of worship—a very plain gown of entire black, with a long, black cloak, and a black hood finished with a veil that shades the face. This dress is kept for the purpose of wearing at church. We highly approve the custom, and wish that something similar could be introduced into the United States—particularly on the solemn occasions of taking the communion, or being confirmed as a christian member. We have known young ladies to have elegant dresses made on purpose, and to get their hair dressed by a barber when preparing for confirmation.
In a Sacred Melody of Moore’s, St. Jerome tells us—
“Yet worldly is that heart at best,
Which beats beneath a broider’d veil;
And she who comes in glittering vest