The donations, I understood, were pooled
by the dining-room waiters and then equally divided; but gifts bestowed
above stairs were for the sole behoof of him or her who took them.
Germans are said to give less than Anglo-Saxons, and it is said that
Italians in some cases do not give at all. But, again, who knows? The
Italians are said never to give drink money to the cabmen, but to pay
only the letter of the tariff. If I had done that in driving about to
look up worse hotels than the one I chose first and last, I should now
be a richer man, but I doubt if a happier. Two cents seems to satisfy a
Roman cabman; five cents has for him the witchery of money found in the
road; but I must not leave the subject of hotels for that of cabs,
however alluringly it beckons.
The reader who knows Italy only from the past should clear his mind of
his old impressions of the hotels. There is no longer that rivalry
between the coming guest and the manager to see how few or many candles
can be lighted in his room and charged in the bill; there are no longer
candles, but only electricity.
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