"The process in England...is to ring for the chambermaid; but in America there are no bells, and no chambermaids. You therefore walk to the bar and solicit the favor of being supplied with a candle, a request that is ultimately, though by no means immediately, complied with. You then explore the way to your apartment unassisted....Your number is 63, but in what part of the mansion that number is to be found you are of course without the means of probable conjecture. Let it be supposed, however, that you...at length discover the object of your search. If you are an Englishman, and too young to have roughed it under Wellington, you are probably what is called in this country 'almighty particular,' and rejoice in a couple of comfortable pillows to say nothing of a lurking prejudice in favor of multiplicity of blankets, especially with the thermometer some fifty degrees below the freezing point. Such luxuries, however, it is ten to one you will not find in the uncurtained crib in which you are destined to pass the night. Your first impulse is to walk downstairs and make known your wants to the landlord. This is a mistake. Have nothing to say to him. You may rely on it, he is too busy to have any time to throw away in humoring the whimsies of a foreigner; and should it happen, as it does sometimes, in the New England States, that the establishment is composed of natives, your chance of a comfortable sleep for the night is about as great as that of your gaining the Thirty Thousand pound prize in the lottery."
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Ch. 8, pp. 139-140. Describing his bedtime experience in a tavern in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the early 1830s. Quoted by Jane Louise Mesick, The English Traveller in America, 1785–1835 (1922) ch. 2, pp. 56-57
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Thomas Hamilton (writer)
1788 – 1864
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