AN OCTOBER ABROAD 183 



hat on the rack in the hall, and stand your umbrella 

 there also, with full assurance that you will find 

 them there when you want them, if it be the next 

 morning or the next week. Instead of that petty 

 tyrant the hotel clerk, a young woman sits in the 

 office with her sewing or other needlework, and qui 

 etly receives you. She gives you your number on 

 a card, rings for a chambermaid to show you to your 

 room, and directs your luggage to be sent up; and 

 there is something in the look of things, and the way 

 they are done, that goes to the right spot at once. 



At the hotel in London where I stopped, the 

 daughters of the landlord, three fresh, comely young 

 women, did the duties of the office; and their pres 

 ence, so quiet and domestic, gave the prevailing hue 

 and tone to the whole house. I wonder how long 

 a young woman could preserve her self-respect and 

 sensibility in such a position in New York or Wash 

 ington ? 



The English regard us as a wonderfully patient 

 people, and there can be no doubt but we put up 

 with abuses unknown elsewhere. If we have no 

 big tyrant, we have ten thousand little ones, who 

 tread upon our toes at every turn. The tyranny 

 of corporations, and of public servants of one kind 

 and another, as the ticket-man, the railroad conduc 

 tor, or even of the country stage-driver, seem to be 

 features peculiar to American democracy. In Eng 

 land the traveler is never snubbed, or made to feel 

 that it is by somebody's sufferance that he is al 

 lowed aboard or to pass on his way. 



