Summary
The American Hotels have often been described. They are very large: all the guests breakfast, dine, and drink tea at a public table, and each has a small bed-room. During the interval between meals, such of the gentlemen as are not engaged in business abroad, smoke, drink, talk politics, or traffic in the bar-room, or reading-room; and the fair sex gossip, flirt, or “rock” in a handsome apartment named the ladies' parlour. It generally contains a piano-forte, and they may be seen playing, and heard singing, with the same self-possession amidst crowds of visiters, as if they were in their own sanctuaries at home. Custom renders this mode of life agreeable to many of them. Few indulge in private parlours, both on account of the expense, and because they prefer the busy throng.
The first impression made on us by New York was not pleasing. Its character necessarily partakes of that of all sea-port towns. In the lower part of the city, next the rivers, the streets are narrow, dirty, and adorned by large fat swine, enjoying the same freedom of locomotion which the United States grant to the natives of every clime who seek their shores.
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- Notes on the United States of North America during a Phrenological Visit in 1838–39–40 , pp. 22 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010