For my own part, I knew few things better than a table d’hôte, that pleasant reunion of all nations, from Stockholm to Stamboul; of every rank, from the grand-duke to the bagman; men and women, or, if you like the phrase better, ladies and gentlemen--some travelling for pleasure, some for profit; some on wedding tours, some in the grief of widowhood; some rattling along the road of life in all the freshness of youth, health, and well-stored purses, others creeping by the wayside cautiously and quietly; sedate and sententious English, lively Italians, plodding Germans, witty Frenchmen, wily Russians, and stupid Belgians-- all pell-mell, seated side by side, and actually shuffled into momentary intimacy by soup, fish, fowl, and entremets. The very fact that you are _en route_ gives a frankness and a freedom to all you say. Your passport is signed, your carriage packed; to-morrow you will be a hundred miles away. What matter, then, if the old baron with the white moustache has smiled at your German, or if the thin-faced lady in the Dunstable bonnet has frowned at your morality?--you ‘ll never, in all likelihood, meet either again. You do your best to be agreeable--it is the only distinction recognised; here are no places of honour, no favoured guests--each starts fair in the race, and a pleasant course I have always deemed it. Now, let no one, while condemning the vulgarity of this taste of mine-- for such I anticipate as the ready objection, though the dissentient should be a tailor from Bond Street or a schoolmistress from Brighton-- for a moment suppose that I mean to include all tables d’hôte in this sweeping laudation; far, very far from it. I, Arthur O’Leary, have travelled some hundreds of thousands of miles in every quarter and region of the globe, and yet would have considerable difficulty in enumerating even six such as fairly to warrant the praise I have pronounced. In the first place, the table d’hôte, to possess all the requisites I desire, should not have its _locale_ in any first-rate city, like Paris, London, or St. Petersburg; no, it should rather be in Brussels, Dresden, Munich, Berne, or Florence. Again, it should not be in the great overgrown mammoth-hotel of the town, with three hundred daily devourers, and a steam-engine to slice the _bouilli_. It should, and will usually, be found in some retired and quiet spot--frequently within a small court, with orange-trees round the walls, and a tiny modest _jet d’eau_ in the middle; a glass-door entering from a flight of low steps into a neat ante-chamber, where an attentive but unobtrusive waiter is ready to take your hat and cane, and, instinctively divining your dinner intentions, ushers you respectfully into the salon, and leans down your chair beside the place you select.