The times of eating and the food were not to my taste the first day. It took me a little while to get adjusted to the change. But in every country I would live as the well-to-do people of the country live. And here I soon learned that the number of meals and the hours of eating were regulated by the climate, which is so bracing as to indicate frequent eating and substantial diet. I am writing this at ten o’clock at night, and I will give you the journal of the day.
Breakfast at 7½ A.M., consisting of coffee, bread and butter, with honey and cold meat.
Dinner at 12, noon, soup, fish, boiled beef, beef à la mode, vegetables, salads, cucumbers, apricots, pears, plums, apples, preserves, pastry, &c.
Lunch at 4 P.M., coffee, bread and butter and honey. Everybody takes this meal as well as the others. They come in from the fields and the shops to their coffee at 4.
Supper at 8 P.M. I am almost ashamed to say that at 8 this meal was served in my parlor, for me only: soup and a roast chicken, which disappeared, leaving scarce a wreck behind. And I forgot to say that at six o’clock I took tea out with a private family in the village, where the table was spread with the richest cream, butter, strawberries, currants, bread, and honey,—all but the tea being the fruit of the gentleman’s own grounds. And at my table there were presented several dishes not enumerated above, the names of which were worse than Greek, and the compound of a color and odor that did not enlist my sympathies. However, I try a little of every thing, and eat all the time. I understand there is a doctor in the village, whose fame extends to distant cities, and ere the week is out I may have to test his skill.
IN THE HOTELS AND ON THE ROAD.
It is one thing to travel in a country, stopping only at the great hotels, and quite another to get off the highways, among the people, and live as they live. At the hotels, the aim is to give you the kind and quality of food you are accustomed to in your own land, to put you into a good bed, and charge you just as much as you will pay. It is my way, when I can, to get out of the beaten paths of travel, and mingle, if possible, with the natives of the country, and those, too, who are not in the habit of entertaining strangers, and soon learning that they are fair game to be plucked as long as they have any feathers.
More than half the guests in the Swiss hotels are Americans. The English complain—John is generally grumbling—that the Americans get the best rooms at the hotels, and that travelling on the continent is not half so agreeable. It was my misfortune to travel last week in the same compartment of the rail-car with an English clergyman and his wife [and, by the way, she called him hubby, for husband, whenever she spoke to him,—an appellation for the head of the house that was new to me, and not very agreeable]. He said he would write a letter to the Times,—that is an Englishman’s universal refuge when he thinks himself imposed upon in travel. “I sholl write to the Times about this country, and I sholl say that the cookin’ is exceedin’ly mean, the scenery very dull, and the travellin’ decidedly uncomfortable.” But he was as near being a fool as a man could well be, and be at large. His tongue ran incessantly, and he talked so loud that no other conversation could be had, and everybody must listen to his twaddle and complaints. “The ’ills were too ’igh” for him to think of climbin’ any of them, and not “’igh” enough to interest him in lookin’ at them; and on the whole he thought Switzerland a failure.
It is curious to observe how soon Americans are known to be such, anywhere in Europe. In England, a hotel waiter or a porter at a lodge or castle would know you to be an American, certainly the moment you spoke, and perhaps before. A woman said to me when I had said that I was an American, “You don’t speak like one.” When I pressed for an answer to the question, “What is the difference between my speech and others,” she replied, after much hesitation, “Why, I thought all your countrymen talked through the nose.”
That educated Americans, and all of them accustomed to good society at home, speak the English language with as much propriety and purity as the most cultivated Englishmen, is certainly true, and it may safely be added that the masses of the people in America, born to the manner, speak it far better. Small as England is, the dialects of the provinces are so diverse, that one is often sorely puzzled to understand a commonplace remark or inquiry. It was very amusing, too, to perceive that many slang phrases, or technical terms, that we had supposed to be of local origin and use in the United States, were as common in England as with us at home. “You’ll ’ave lots of time,” says the coachman. “I’ll pop out your luggage,” when he would tell us that it would be done instantly, said the conductor.