Leaving the custom-house behind you, the way is clear to seek a hotel. Generally there are plenty of runners at the landing-place, and if you have chosen the establishment where you are to stop, you have only to name it, and the runner for that house will step forward to take charge of yourself and your belongings. Sometimes the baggage is taken on the cab or carriage which carries you, and at others it is intrusted to licensed porters, who are responsible for its safe delivery, and can be trusted without much hesitation. As far as possible, it is best to keep your baggage always with you when traveling, but there are many instances where it is not convenient to do so. Before you leave the custom-house there are some fees to be paid to the porters who have handled your luggage, but none to the officers who examined it. You will find, too, that the man who puts it on the carriage desires to be remembered, and you discover very early in your travels that you are in the land of fees. If you are in charge of the hotel runner you can let him settle these matters, or, if you prefer to attend to them yourself, you can do so, but you run the risk of giving too much. The runner is not always to be trusted, as he sometimes has a secret arrangement with the porters to compel strangers to bleed freely with the understanding that he is to receive the surplus. For putting the ordinary baggage of a traveler through the custom-house and on the top of a cab, a shilling is sufficient, and if it is handled by two persons they should be satisfied with a sixpence each.
It is best to ask the hotel proprietor to settle for your cab rather than attempt it yourself. It is next to impossible to ascertain from a driver how much he is legally entitled to; he either lies about it, or will not give a direct answer. He will "leave it to the gentleman," and the more you persist in knowing, the more he will "leave it to your honor." And finally when you make a venture, and through fear of giving too little give too much, the chances are, five to one, he will declare himself under-paid, and demand more. He promises beforehand to leave it to you, but rarely does, and therein is the aggravating part of the business. The only way to do under such circumstances is to walk off and leave him to shower imprecations on you; if you prefer peace and quietness you will pay what he demands. This payment will be followed by a request for an additional something for drinking your health, and possibly by a hint that the horse is hungry, and a trifle to buy oats would be appreciated by the beast. Don't expect a driver in the United Kingdom to change a coin for you; his pockets may be bulging with shillings and sixpences, but he declares with the most solemn face that he has no change, and possibly insists that you are the first patron he has had for two days.
Our copy-books at school generally inform us that the horse is a noble animal. No one will be likely to dispute the statement, as we all have a respect for the horse, and many of us are familiar with incidents that show his excellent character. But, admitting his nobility, it is a little singular that he should be associated with so much that is the reverse of noble, or rather that the great majority of those who associate with him are inclined to rascality. The whole race of hackmen and cabmen, from one end of the world to the other, are distinguished for their swindling tendencies; horse-trading and horse-jockeying are synonyms of cheating, and the race-track is the resort of scoundrels of all grades and kinds. If the traveler is not prepared to accept this proposition before landing in the old world, he will have excellent opportunities to verify it before he has been a month on the eastern side of the Atlantic.
In the English hotels the traveler will find many things to remind him that he is not in the United States. Instead of an office with a marble counter, a heavy register, and a clerk gorgeous as to hair and sparkling as to breast-pin, he finds a little window opening into a room only a few feet square, and behind the window a woman. She takes his application for lodging, and as he peers into the nook where she sits he wonders how the New York hotel clerk would get along in such narrow limits. Perhaps he may see a door opening beyond the office into an equally small apartment, where the book-keeper is stationed, and, in many instances, he finds that the accounts are kept by one of the gentler sex.
In many hotels not a man is visible about the office, with the possible exception of the porter, and the entire management is in feminine hands. The proprietor is rarely seen, and even the manager, where there is a masculine one, is a personage who is reached with more or less difficulty. At a famous hotel in Ireland, which bears the name of its proprietor, the story goes that a gentleman asked one day if that individual was in.
"He's in his private office, sir," was the reply.
"Say that I wish to see him a moment," said the gentleman, who was a London merchant of considerable prominence, and well known as a frequent patron of the hotel.
The clerk disappeared, and shortly returned with the following message:—
"Mr. —— is engaged at present over some papers, and will send his secretary out in a few minutes to see what you want."
The American will miss the wide corridors of the hotels of his native land, and he finds the space usually given up to the public in the United States is here reserved for the strict use of the house. There are no broad reading-rooms and parlors, with a plentiful supply of papers from all parts of the country, as in the great hostelries at home; the bar is a dingy nook, scarcely larger than the office, and the most conspicuous ornaments in it are the handles of the beer-pumps. The bartender is absent, and in his place the bar-maid presides; those who are bibulously inclined will find comparatively little to tempt them, as the array of "mixed drinks," so common in an American bar, is practically unknown in England. A few drinking establishments in London have sought to attract the patronage of strangers from the United States by advertising "American drinks," but those who have tried them say that the British concoctions are base counterfeits of the great originals.