Page:The Family Album.pdf/59

Rh It used to be mutton on Monday, veal on Tuesday and all those et cetera things, and you had about as much choice as coal on the chute. Talk about forcible feedings, home cooking was force without any feed.

But in a hotel a man can look at the bill-of-menu and he could order what he wanted and the waiter didn’t want to be kissed and the manager of the hotel wouldn’t bust into tears if he threw a plate at the cashier and missed. He said it was easier to dine with gentlemen than like one.

Hotel owners never asked guests to get up early in the morning and make the furnace fire, and so far as mending clothes was concerned, he said he never knew what real comfort was until he had lost all the buttons off his red flannel underwear. They’d put enough starch in the cuffs to support a broken leg and if the neckband was any tougher they could chip diamonds with it. And anybody who wore a home-laundered collar did so with suicidal intent.

If you wanted your trousers mended your wife would slash a piece to match it out of your coat. Then she would have to chop up your vest to fix the coat and by the time they got through match-