If we have become cosmopolitan in the matter of domestic comfort and elegance as regards our drawing-rooms, the same is certainly true of our dining-rooms, and dinner-tables. But here it seems to me that we are more justly open to criticism on the score of over-exuberance. That is, the fairly well-to-do class, for the plain people of foreign blood, and the low liver of native blood, eat almost as indigestible food, and quite as rapidly and unceremoniously, as the pie and doughnut nurtured yeoman of original Yankee stock, who thrived in spite of his diet, and left to his grandchildren the heritage of dyspepsia which has become nervous prostration in the present generation. It seems as though our instincts of hospitality have grown in direct ratio with our familiarity with and adoption of civilized creature comforts, and any charge of exuberance may doubtless be fairly ascribed to the national trait of generosity, the abuse of which is after all a noble blemish. But, on the other hand, facts remain, even after one has given a pleasing excuse for their existence, and it may be doubted if a spendthrift is long consoled by the reflection that his impecuniosity is due to his own disinclination to stint. May it not truthfully be charged against the reasonably well-to-do American citizen that he has a prejudice against thrift, especially where the entertainment of his fellow man or woman is concerned? The rapid growth of wealth and the comparative facility of becoming rich during the last half century of our development, has operated against the practice of small economies, so that we find ourselves now beset by extravagant traditions which we hesitate to deviate from for fear of seeming mean. Many a man to-day pays his quarter of a dollar ruefully and begrudgingly to the colored Pullman car porter at the end of his journey, when he is “brushed off,” because he cannot bring himself to break the custom which fixed the fee. It would be interesting to estimate what the grand total of saving to the American travelling public would have been if ten instead of twenty-five cents a head had been paid to the tyrant in question since he first darkened the situation. If not enough to maintain free schools for the negro, at least sufficient to compel railroad managements to give their employees suitable wages instead of letting the easy-going traveller, who has already paid for the privilege of a reserved seat, pay a premium on that. The exorbitant fees bestowed on waiters is but another instance of a tendency to be over-generous, which, once reduced to custom, becomes the severest kind of tax, in that it is likely to affect the warmest-hearted people.