24 THE CLARENDON HOTEL. 



place. In some of the gardens in New York may be seen 

 an occasional fly-catcher. 



From the hack carriage I was at last delivered to the 

 Clarendon Hotel, and I found it an ample one, and for 

 a wonder clean, and more free from that pigsty appear 

 ance of almost all the great hotels in the United States, 

 caused by the beastly as well as to themselves unwhole 

 some custom of spitting all over the floors, stoves, and 

 fire-places in which this strange people so pertinaciously 

 indulge. Oh ! with what a comfortable sigh, after the 

 confines of a ship, I arranged my dressing-case in a nice 

 chamber, with its ample bath for hot and cold water 

 within its own privacy arranged, and how I contemplat 

 ed the comfortable bed the very look of it was a narco 

 tic ; but I had to prepare myself to dine at a table with 

 many people, male and female, the table tfhote being fixed 

 for four o'clock, so I set about giving myself the appear 

 ance of an English gentleman, refreshed and ready for 

 observation or adventure. 



The hours for dinner in America are peculiarly incon 

 venient and erroneous in their arrangement, either for 

 business, health, or pleasure; and the waste of time 

 consequent on their fixture is so evident, that in a 

 mercantile nation it is scarce possible to understand why 

 there has not come about a wholesome reformation. It 

 is curious, but in their hours of dinner and breakfast 

 they seem to cling to the daily usages of a bygone era, 

 as well as to those of what were originally, and which 

 are now in England, the hurried meals of the working 

 classes. In this they resembled or kept pace with their 

 errors in the classification or names of birds and beasts, 

 though of course among their very clever and well-in 

 formed gentlemen and professors there are those that 



