The truth of the matter is that we have borrowed more than nomenclature from Europe. We have taken the so-called "European plan" with all of its disadvantages and none of its advantages. We have done away with the stuffy over-eating "American plan" and have made a rule of "pay-as-you-go" that is quite all right--and is not. For to the simple "European plan" has recently been added many complications. In other days the generosity of the portions in a New York hotel was famous. A single portion of any important dish was ample for two. Your smiling old-fashioned waiter told you that. The waiter in a New York restaurant today does not smile. He merely tells you that the food is served "per portion" which generally means that an unnecessary amount of food is prepared in the kitchen and sent from the table, uneaten, as waste. And a smart New York _restauranteur_ recently made a "cover charge" of twenty-five cents for bread and butter and ice-water. Others followed. It will not be long before a smarter _restauranteur_ will make the "cover charge" fifty cents, and then folk will begin streaming into his place. They don't complain. That's not the New York way.
They do not even complain of the hat-boys--bloodthirsty little brigands who snatch your hat and other wraps before you enter a restaurant. The brigands are skillfully chosen--lean, hungry little boys every time, never fat, sleek, well-fed looking little boys. They are employed by a trust, which rents the "hat-checking privilege" from the proprietor of the hotel or restaurant. The owner of the trust pays well for these privileges and the little boys must work hard to bring him back his rental fees and a fair profit beside.
Leave that to them. Emerge from a restaurant, well-fed and at peace with the world and deny that lean-looking, swarthy-faced, black-eyed boy a quarter if you can--or dare. A dime is out of the question. He might insult you, probably would. But a quarter buys your self-respect and the head of the trust a share in his new motor car. The lean-looking boy buys no motor cars. He works on a salary and there are no pockets in his uniform. There is a stern-visaged cicerone in the background and to the cicerone roll all the quarters, but the New Yorker does not complain--save when he reaches Los Angeles or Atlanta or some other fairly distant place and finds the same sort of highway brigandage in effect there.