Everything is on a grand scale in American hotels, especially the bills.
With few exceptions, the waiters in all the great hotels are negroes. You are served with intelligence and politeness. No "duchesses" in the great cities of the north, or the fashionable resorts of the south.
Those good negroes have such cheerful, open faces! They seem so glad to be alive, and they look so good-natured, that it does one good to see them. When they look at one another, they laugh. When you look at them, they laugh. If a negro sees another negro blacker than himself, he is delighted; he calls him "darky," and looks on him in a patronising way. Their great dark eyes that show the whites so, when they roll them in their own droll fashion; the two rows of white teeth, constantly on view, framed in thick retroussé lips; the swaying manner of walking, with turned-out toes and head thrown back; the musical voice, sweet but sonorous, and so pleasing compared to the horrible twang of the lower-class people of the north,—all make up a picturesque whole: you forget the colour, and fall to admiring them.
And how amusing they are!
At the Everett Hotel, Jacksonville, I one day went to the wrong table.
"You've come to de wrong table, sah," said the attendant darky. Then, indicating the negro who served at the next table, he added, "Dat's de gentleman dat waits on you, sah."
I immediately recognised my "gentleman," and changed my seat. The fact is that all the negroes are alike at a glance. It requires as much perspicacity to tell one from another, as it does to distinguish one French gendarme from another French gendarme.
I never met with such memories as some of those darkies have.
As I have said, the hotels of Florida are besieged during the winter months. At dinner time, you may see from six hundred to a thousand people at table. The black head-waiter knows each of the guests. The second time they enter the dining-room, he conducts them to their places without making a mistake in one instance. If you stop but a day, you may return a month after, and not only will he recollect your face, but he will be able to tell you which little table you sat at, and which place at that table was yours.
At the door of the dining-room, a young negro of sixteen or eighteen takes your hat and puts it on a hat-rack. I have seen hundreds thus in his care at a time. You leave the dining-room, and, without a moment's hesitation, he singles out your hat and hands it to you. It is wonderful when one thinks of it. I give you the problem to solve. Several hundred men, most of whom you have not seen more than once or twice before, pass into a room, handing you their chimney-pots or wide-awakes to take care of. They come out of the room in no sort of order, and you have to give each the hat that belongs to him. I have tried hard and often, but never succeeded in finding out how it is done.