"Well, then, you begin to see. There are several good restaurants quite near that good hotel where I get the same combination breakfast for the same price; and if I go to one of those shining halls which you find in a score of places, up and down Broadway and the side streets, I get it for twenty-five cents. But though those shining halls glare at you with roofs and walls of stainless tile and glass, and tables of polished marble, their bill of fare is so inflexibly adjusted to the general demand that I cannot get Souchong or Ceylon tea for any money; I can only get Oolong; otherwise I must take a cup of their excellent coffee. If I wander from my wonted breakfast, I can get almost anything in the old American range of dishes for five or ten cents a portion, and the quality and quantity are both all I can ask. As I have learned upon inquiry, the great basal virtues of these places are good eggs and good butter: I like to cut from the thick slice of butter under the perfect cube of ice, better than to have my butter pawed into balls or cut into shavings, as they serve your butter in Europe. But I prefer having a small table to myself, with my hat and overcoat vis-a-vis on the chair opposite, as I have it at that good hotel. In those shining halls I am elbowed by three others at my polished marble table; but if there were more room I should never object to the company. It is the good, kind, cleanly, comely American average, which is the best company in the world, with a more than occasional fine head, and faces delicately sculptured by thought and study. I address myself fearlessly to the old and young of my own sex, without ever a snub such as I might get from the self-respectful maids or matrons who resort to the shining halls, severally or collectively, if I ventured upon the same freedom with them. I must say that my commensals lunch or dine as wisely as I do for the most part, but sometimes I have had to make my tacit criticisms; and I am glad that I forbore one night with a friendly young man at my elbow, who had just got his order of butter-cakes--" "Butter-cakes?" we queried. "That is what they call a rich, round, tumid product of the griddle, which they serve very hot, and open to close again upon a large lump of butter. For two of those cakes and his coffee my unknown friend paid fifteen cents, and made a supper, after which I should not have needed to break my fast the next morning. But he fearlessly consumed it, and while he ate he confided that he was of a minor clerical employ in one of the great hotels near by, and when I praised our shining hall and its guests he laughed and said he came regularly, and he always saw people there who were registered at his hotel: they found it good and they found it cheap. I suppose you know that New York abounds in tables d'hote of a cheapness unapproached in the European capitals?"