A Walk from London to John O'Groat's. Elihu Burritt

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      These are about the average charges at the middle-class hotels in Great Britain. Generally the servants’ fees amount to 25 per cent. of the whole bill. These, too, are graduated to parts of days. The waiter expects 3d. for every meal he serves; the chambermaid 6d. for every bed she makes, and the boots 3d. for doing every pair of boots, brogans, or shoes. You will pay these charges with all the better grace and good-will to these servants when you come to learn that these fees frequently, if not always, constitute all the salary they receive for hotel service. Even in a great number of eating-shops the same rule obtains. The penny you give the waiter, male or female, is all he or she gets for serving you. Besides this consideration, you get back much additional personal comfort from these extras. The waiter serves you with extra satisfaction and assiduity under their stimulus. He acts the host very blandly. He answers a hundred questions, extraneous to the meal, with good-natured readiness. He is a good judge of the weather and its signs. He is well “posted-up” in the local histories and sceneries of the place. He can give political information on both sides, incidents and anecdotes to match, whether you are Tory, Whig, or Radical. If you have a bias in that direction, he has or has heard some thoughts on Bishop Colenso and the Tractarians. In short, he caters to the humour and disposition of every guest with a happy facility of adaptation; and the shilling you give him at the end of a day’s entertainment has been pretty well earned, if you have availed yourself of all these extra attentions which he is prepared and expecting to give for it.

      The same may be said of the chambermaid. She is not the taciturn invisible that steals in and out of your bed-room, and does it up when you are at breakfast or at your out-door business—whom you never see, except by sheer accident, as in the American hotel. She is an important and prominent personage in the English inn. She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satisfaction; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to yourself. No other subordinate official or servant trenches or poaches upon her preserves. She it is who precedes you up stairs with a candle, on a broad-bottomed brass candlestick, polished to its highest lustre. She conducts you to your room as if you were her personal guest, invited and expected a month ago. She opens the door with amiable complacency, as if welcoming you to a hospitality which she had prepared for you with especial care, before she knew you had arrived in town. She invites you, by a movement of her eyes, to glance at the room and see how comfortable it is; how round and soft is the bed, how white and well-aired are the sheets and pillows, how nice the curtains, how clean and tidy the carpet, in short, how everything is fitted to incline you to “rest and be thankful.” And then the cheery “good night!” she bids you is said with a tone that is worth the sixpence she expects in the morning; and you pay it, too, with a much better grace than could be expected from an American recently arrived in the country.

      And the “boots” is a character, too, unmixedly and interestingly English, in name, person, appearance, and position. In the first of these qualities he is unique, being called after the subject of his occupation. He is an important personage, and generally has his own bell in the dining-room, surmounted by his name, to be called for any service coming within his department. And this is quite a wide one, including a great variety of errandry and porterage, as well as polishing boots and shoes. He is very helpful in a great many different ways, and often very intelligent, and knows all about the streets, the railway trains, the omnibuses, cabs, etc., and will assist you in such matters with good grace and activity. He may have got in the way of putting the H before the eggs instead of the ham; but he is just as good for all that, and more interesting besides. So you do not grudge the 3d. you give him daily for his strictly professional services, or the extra 6d. he expects for carrying your carpet-bag or portmanteau to the railway-station.

      Thus, although this feeing of servants may seem at first strange to an American traveller in England, and may occasion him some perplexity and even annoyance, he will soon become accustomed to it; and in making up the balance-sheet of the additional cost on one side and the additional comfort on the other which the system produces, he will come even to the mathematical conclusion, “if to equals you add equals, the sums will be equals.”