HOTEL TIPPING
One of the often unconsidered items of expense in hotel life is the “tips” that one must give. In no other place is one’s hand so often in one’s pocket. A porter carries a bag, and he must be tipped; another carries up a trunk, he must be tipped; one rings for iced water, and the boy bringing it expects his ten cents; one wants hot water every morning, and in notifying the chambermaid of this fact, must slip a bit of silver into her palm. The waiter at one’s table must be frequently remembered, and the head waiter will give one better attention if he finds something in his hand after he shows the new arrival to a table, and, of course, on leaving, one will also give a fee. So it goes! When, however, one is staying by the week at a hotel, “tips” need be given only once a week,—unless some unusual favor is asked. We may rebel against the custom, and with reason. But as not one of us can alter the state of affairs, it is well to accept it with a good grace, or reconcile one’s self to indifferent service.
CHILDREN IN A HOTEL
The matter of children in a hotel is one on which so much has been said and written that there is little left to say. At the first glance one is tempted to resent the fact that many hotel proprietors object to having children accompany their parents to the public table, and that some even demur at their presence in the house. Child-lovers have said bitterly that the celestial “many mansions” seem to be the only abodes in which the little ones are welcome,—and all these opinions have a great deal of truth on their side. But it is not until one has undergone the annoyance of ill-governed children in a house where there are no restrictions enforced on them that one sees the other side of the shield. One large boarding-house at a fashionable summer resort is popular to mothers of large families because the proprietor does not object to children. A guest there last season decided that if that were the case said proprietor had no nerves. She soon learned that childless guests declined to stay at the place. Children raced up and down the long corridors, screaming as they went; they played noisily outside of bedroom doors; they ate like little pigs at the hotel tables. In short, they made the house a purgatory for all except other children and their mothers.
TWO TYPES OF MOTHERS
There are two types of mothers in this land of ours that are greatly at fault. One is the mother who hands the management of the children over to a nurse or several nurses, and she is, of course, the rich woman whose children see her seldom, and that not often enough to bother her. The other type is the woman who has nerves toward all things except her own children’s noise. She is such a doting parent that she is, to all appearances, blind and deaf to the fact that her own offspring drive to the verge of insanity other “grown-ups” with whom they come in contact. Verily the American youngster is having everything his own way in private and public nowadays! Dwellers in hotels are to be pardoned if they beg that he be kept in private until his parents learn to govern him, and by thus doing, show mercy to other people.
While the rules that govern propriety should be adhered to everywhere, there is no other place where they should be more strictly observed than at the summer hotel, or the boarding-house of a fashionable watering-place. It may not be an exaggeration to state that there are few decent places where they are more openly disregarded. With the trammels of city life one seems to lay down an appreciation of the fitness of things generally. The free intercourse, the rapidly-made acquaintances, the mingling of many sorts of peoples in the huge caravansary—tend to make us cast aside conventionalities. Husbands, running down from the city for a Sunday with their wives, find them absorbed and happy in the gay life about them, and quite sufficient unto themselves when the husbands return to counting-room and office on Monday morning. There is always a class of men who, having nothing else to do, are habitués of the summer hotel, where they flirt with the wives of other men and make themselves generally useful and talked about.
AVOIDING GOSSIP