that cutlet, waiter; pray do !" He cannot go
at once, for he is carrying in seventeen pounds
of American cheese for you to finish with, and a
small Landed Estate of celery and watercress.
The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a
new view of you—doubtfully, now, as if he had
rejected the resemblance to his brother, and had
begun to think you more like his aunt or his
grandmother. Again you beseech your waiter
with pathetic indignation, to "see after that
cutlet I" He steps out to see after it, and by-
and-by, when you are going away without it,
comes back with it. Even then, he will not take
the sham silver-cover off, without a pause for a
flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as if he
were surprised to see it—which cannot possibly
be the case, he must have seen it so often
before. A sort of fur has been produced upon
its surface by the cook's art, and, in a sham
silver vessel staggering on two feet instead of
three, is a cutaneous kind of sauce, of brown
pimples and pickled cucumber. You order the
bill, but your waiter cannot bring your bill yet,
because he is bringing, instead, three flinty-
hearted potatoes and two grim head of broccoli,
like the occasional ornaments on area railings,
badly boiled. You know that you will
never come to this pass, any more than to the
cheese and celery, and you imperatively demand
your bill; but it takes time to get, even when
gone for, because your waiter has to communicate
with a lady who lives behind a sash-window
in a corner, and who appears to have to refer to
several Ledgers before she can make it out — as
if you had been staying there a year. You become
distracted to get away, and the other
waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks
at you—but suspiciously, now, as if you had
begun to remind him of the party who took the
great-coats last winter. Your bill at last brought
and paid, at the rate of sixpence a mouthful,
your waiter reproachfully reminds you that
"attendance is not charged for a single meal,"
and you have to search in all your pockets for
sixpence more. He has a worse opinion of
you than ever, when you have given it to
him, and lets you out into the street with the
air of one saying to himself, as you cannot
doubt he is, " I hope we shall never see you
here again!"

Or, take any other of the numerous travelling
instances in which, with more time at your dis-
posal, you are, have been, or may be, equally ill
served. Take the old-established Bull's Head
with its old-established knife-boxes on its old-
established sideboards, its old-established flue
under its old-established four-post bedsteads in
its old-established airless rooms, its old-established
frouziness up-stairs and down stairs, its
old-established cookery, and its old-established
principles of plunder. Count up your injuries,
in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white
poultices, of apothecaries' powders in rice for
curry, of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually
relying for an adventitious interest on forcemeat
balls. You have had experience of the
old-established Bull's Head's stringy fowls, with
lower extremities like wooden legs, sticking up
out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled mutton,
gushing horribly among its capers, when carved;
of its little dishes of pastry—roofs of spermaceti
ointment, erected over half an apple or
four gooseberries. Well for you if you have
yet forgotten the old-established Bull's Head's
fruity port: whose reputation was gained
solely by the old-established price the Bull's
Head put upon it, and by the old-established air
with which the Bull's Head set the glasses and
D'Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout to the
three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its old-
established colour hadn't come from the dyer's.

Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that
we all know, every day.

We all know the new hotel near the station,
where it is always gusty, going up the lane
which is always muddy, where we are sure to
arrive at night, and where we make the gas
start awfully when we open the front door.
We all know the flooring of the passages and
staircases that is too new, and the walls that
are too new, and the house that is haunted by
the ghost of mortar. We all know the doors
that have cracked, and the cracked shutters
through which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate
moon. We all know the new people who
have come to keep the new hotel, and who wish
they had never come, and who (inevitable result)
wish we had never come. We all know
how much too scant and smooth and bright the
new furniture is, and how it has never settled
down, and cannot fit itself into right places,
and will get into wrong places. We all know
how the gas, being lighted, shows maps of Damp
upon the walls. We all know how the ghost of
mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our
negus, goes up to bed with us, ascends the pale
bedroom chimney, and prevents the smoke from
following. We all know how a leg of our chair
comes off, at breakfast in the morning, and how
the dejected waiter attributes the accident to a
general greenness pervading the establishment,
and informs us, in reply to a local inquiry, that
he is thankful to say he is an entire stranger in
that part of the country, and is going back to
his own connexion on Saturday.

We all know, on the other hand, the great
station hotel belonging to the company of
proprietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the
back outskirts of any place we like to name,
and where we look out of our palatial windows, at
little back yards and gardens, old summer-houses,
fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties. We all
know this hotel in which we can get anything
we want, after its kind, for money; but where
nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or
minds (our bill paid) whether we come, or go,
or how, or when, or why, or cares about us. We
all know this hotel, where we have no individuality,
but put ourselves into the general post,
as it were, and are sorted and disposed of
according to our division. We all know that we
can get on very well indeed at such a place, but
still not perfectly well; and this may be, because
the place is largely wholesale, and there is