Humbug.
There is no end to the humbug in life. About half we say, and more than half we do, is tinged with humbug. "My Dear Sir," we say, when we address a letter to a fellow we have never seen, and if seen, perhaps don't care a continental cent for him; dear sir! what a humbug expression! "Good morning," (what a lie!) says one, as he meets another one, on a stormy and nasty day, "quite a disagreeable wet day!" What's the use of such a humbug expression as that? If it's a disagreeable and stormy day, every body finds it out, naturally. Full half of the people who appear solicitous about your health, display a gratuitous amount of humbug, for your pocket-book is more beloved than your health; and we have often wondered why matter-of-fact people don't out with it, when they meet, and say—"How's your pocket to-day? Sorry to hear you're out of money!" Or, instead of soft soap, when they meet, why not discard humbug, and say, "Sorry to see you—was blackguarding you all day!" instead of "Glad to see you—have been thinking of you to-day!" or, "I'm glad to see you've been elected Mayor of the city!" when in fact they mean, "Curse you, I wish you had been defeated!" Compliments pass, they say, when gentlemen meet, but, as there are so many counterfeit gentry around, now-a-days, you may bet high that half the compliments that pass are—mere bogus!
Hotel Keeping.
Fortunes are made—very readily, it is said, in our large cities, by Hotel keeping. It does look money-making business to a great many people, who stop in a large hotel a day or two, and perhaps, after eating about two meals out of six—walking in quietly and walking out quietly—no fuss, no feathers, find themselves taxed four or five dollars!
We have had occasion to know something of travel and travellers, hotels, hotel-keepers and their bills, and it has now and then entered our head that money was or could be made—in the hotel business. We have stopped in houses where we honestly concluded—we got our money's worth, and we have again had reason to believe ourselves grossly shaved, in a "first-class" hotel, at two dollars a day—all hurry-scurry, poked up in the cock-loft, mid bugs, dirt, heat and effluvia, very little better than a Dutch tavern in fly time.
We did not fail to observe at the same time, that cool impudence and clamor had a most mollifying effect upon landlord and his attaches, the tinsel and mere electrotypes passing for real bullion, galvanized hums by their noise and pretensions faring fifty per cent. better for the same price—than the more republican, quiet and human wayfarer.
Under such auspices, it is not at all wonderful that ourself and scores of others, paying two dollars and a half per diem, got what we could catch, while Kossuth, and a score of his followers, fared and were favored like princes of a monarchical realm—"though all dead heads!"
Hotels now-a-days must be showy, abounding in tin foil, Dutch metal and gamboge, a thousand of the "modern improvements"—mere clap-trap, and as foreign to the solid comforts of solid people, as icebergs to Norwegians or "east winds" to the consumptive. Without the show, they would be quite deserted; men will pay for this show, must pay for it, and all this show costs money; Turkey carpets, life-size mirrors, ottomans and marble slabs, from dome to kitchen, draw well, and those who indulge in the dance, must pay the piper.