ABSTRACT
The hotels willingly receive such. Some will make extremely ample reductions, to permanent customers: but of course they prefer those guests who do not ask for, and would not accept, any concession. Most of the old hotels have furbished up and endeavoured to meet the modern standard. The great motive cause was probably the Limited Liability Act, which, both for good and evil, has immensely modified the character of English commercial transactions. One of the most important officials in an hotel is the head-waiter. Dickens, in his ‘Mutual Friend,’ in that incomparable marriage dinner at Greenwich, makes the head-waiter Archbishop. There are some large hotels which of late years have been dropped down in romantic sites where the people can study bits of scenery and phases of society with peculiar facility. Most are holiday people who, according to the wise modern fashion, are securing a rest and breaking time in the year.
