In France, we look well at the bill of fare and study it; we discuss the dishes, arranging them discreetly and artistically in the mind before making their acquaintance more fully on the palate. We are gourmets. In America, the question seems to be not, "Which of these dishes will go well together?" but, "How many of them can I manage?" It is so much a day; the moderate eaters pay for the gluttons.
You see women come down at eight to breakfast in silk attire, and decked with diamonds. And what a breakfast! First an orange and a banana to freshen the mouth and whet the appetite; then fish, bacon and eggs, or omelette, beefsteak and fried potatoes, hominy cakes, and preserves.
"How little you eat, you Frenchpeople!" said an American to me one day, as I was ordering my breakfast of café au lait and bread and butter.
"You are mistaken," said I; "only we do not care for our dinner at eight o'clock in the morning."
The larger the hotel is, the better the Americans like it. A little, quiet, well-kept hotel where, the cookery being done for twenty or thirty persons instead of a thousand, the beef has not the same taste as mutton; a hotel where you are known and called by your name, where you are not simply No. 578, like a convict;—this kind of pitching place does not attract the American, He must have something large, enormous, immense. He is inclined to judge everything by its size.
Jacksonville and St. Augustine boast a score of hotels, each capable of accommodating from six hundred to a thousand guests. These hotels are all full from the beginning of January to the end of March.
I have almost always accepted with reserve the American superlatives followed by the traditional in the world; but it may safely be said that the Ponce de Leon Hotel, at St. Augustine, is not only the largest and handsomest hotel in America, but in the whole world. Standing in the prettiest part of the picturesque little town, this Moorish palace, with its walls of onyx, its vast, artistically-furnished saloons, its orange-walks, fountains, cloisters, and towers, is a revelation, a scene from the Arabian Nights.
Here the Americans congregate in search of a "good time," as they call it. The charges range from ten to twenty-five dollars a day for each person, exclusive of wines and extras. The American who goes to the Ponce de Leon with his wife and daughters, therefore spends twelve, fifteen, or twenty pounds a day. For this sum, he and his family are fed, played to by a very ordinary band, and supplied with an immense choice of rocking-chairs. On his return to New York, he declares to his friends that he has had a "lovely time." The American never admits that he has been bored, in America especially. The smallest incidents of the trip are events and adventures, and he never fails to have his "good time." He is as easily pleased as a child, and everything American calls out his admiration, or at least his interest. Remark to him, for instance, that to go by train to Florida from the north, one has to travel through more than six hundred miles of pine-forest—which makes the journey very uninteresting—and he will throw you a pitying glance which seems to say "Immense, sir, immense, like everything that is American."