Refreshment room

“ Nothing stale must be allowed to remain in a sick room, neither drink, food, nor anything at all. Many people are fond of having a small table beside the bed with cooling drink ready for the patient. It is much the best plan to let it stand in another room. ”

“ The reason is, that they have moisture or a strong odor, two things to be avoided in a storeroom where delicate groceries are kept. A cold room where there is a free circulation of air is a better place for them. ”

“ At the other end of the room, between the two curving windows, a fire was burning in the great fireplace; and on the side of the room, through white-panelled, open doors, he caught glimpses into little sloping rooms beyond, with small-paned windows and half-drawn curtains and subdued color and light; and in one of the rooms, on a mahogany table, a brass dish of fruit-plums and oranges and grapefruit and hothouse melons and pears, the colors of the fruit and the yellow dish glowing dully in the shining wood of the table—a bit of Dutch interior—like a picture that grows real as one looks at it. ”

“ As speedily as possible we arranged our toilets and descended once more to the lower regions, with the faint hope that the dining-room might be better furnished with the good things of this life than either the parlor or bed-room. ”

“ If he prefer a real genuine swim he finds it near the back door of the hotel in a tank a hundred feet long, in fresh cold water with the air barely taken off. In his room he has a soft bed to sleep upon, surrounded by tasty furniture, and eats in a large dining room attended by silent waiters, and provided with fruits, wines and viands fit to satisfy the most fastidious. ”

“ The real dining-room was big enough for a dancing floor, with an enormous table, preposterously heavy furniture all around the four sides of the room, and an air of gloom that would have removed, before the food appeared, even, all trace of a healthy appetite. ”

“ The walks to the springs in the early morning—the display of an elegant breakfast toilet upon the gallery or promenade—bowling in the forenoon—strolls to the Indian encampments, musical matinees, private concerts, lessons in the new dances in the ball-room, battledore upon the lawns and in the parlor, sherry cobblers, mint juleps and brandy smashes, groups for intellectual conversation, everywhere—then the dinner toilet preparations, the evening drives, excursions upon the lakes, moonlight flirtations and pleasant dreams—combine the excitements of a Saratoga day and night. ”

“ This constant stream of visitors always met in the kitchen,—a low-ceiled, old-fashioned interior, full of nooks and angles, that had for years adapted itself to everybody’s wants and ministered to everybody’s comfort,—and was really the cheeriest and cosiest room in the house. ”

“ There was no guest-room but the low, spacious kitchen into which they had first entered, and he was standing before the smouldering peat fire and pointing with animated gestures first to the bottle and then to his flask when the house door was burst open, and a whole party of tourists, struggling with wind, water-proofs and umbrellas, ran hastily in. ”

“ The next development of the house was as a cosy hotel, with the big rooms broken up into little suites of apartments, the anteroom turned into a dining-room, where a very good table-d'hôte dinner was served, and a bid made to attract well-to-do couples who liked hotel life. ”

“ She went into the bathroom and bathed her flushed face in cold water, straightened her tumbled hair, resumed her usual attitude of indifference to the world in general, and going down to the dining-room slipped into her place quietly. ”

“ We went up two pairs of stairs, and I did so in fear and trembling, remembering what the odour is when a large dining-room is filled with black waiters: a sort of sickly, sour smell pervades the room, that makes one hate the thought, either of dinner, or of the poor niggers themselves. ”

“ Never allow a kitchen to be placed under the same roof as your dining-room or drawing-room: cut it off completely from the corps de logis, and let it only communicate by a passage;—so shall you avoid all chance of those anticipatory smells, the odour of which is sufficient to spoil your appetite for the best dressed dinner in the world. ”

“ In the coat-room he finds a man-servant in attendance, ready to assist in any trifling matters of the toilet, who hands each gentleman, on a silver tray, a tiny envelope, enclosing a card bearing the name of the lady he is to take in to dinner. ”

“ If the ladies only retire to the drawing room, one waitress serves them there with coffee, while another remains in the dining room. Here she passes cigars and cigarettes on a tray, together with a lighted candle or matches, and then serves coffee and cordials or brandy and soda. ”

“ Pure air and the restfulness of order are favourable and refining to appetite.
To allow fruit or any kind of food to stand in the dining room is a poor custom. Such things attract flies, create an odour of food in the room, and encourage the indulgent habit of eating bits now and then between meals. ”

“ It is equally unpleasant to sit in the room in which one has just dined, or to take meals in the room where they have just been cooked. With a little contrivance and ingenuity, the kitchen may be transformed into a neat little dining-room, a gas stove erected in any convenient recess or in the bathroom, and with paper-bag cookery, nothing more elaborate will be needed. ”

“ Home is the place where the out-of-date lingers, and where modern conveniences that add to the complexity and the worry of life have no corner. At the modern hotel you are a document in a pigeon-hole—a number, not a person—an accident, not substantive. The chambermaid does not wait on you, but on the room. You get up, breakfast, dine, according to the times fixed by the management. You cannot have your bath before a certain hour, and the bacon is not frizzled until nine o’clock. Luncheon is probably elastic because it is cold, and potatoes can be kept hot without difficulty. ”

“ The bath-room itself is low, and provided with shelves where you lie down and are parboiled with hot steam, which is constantly kept up by water being thrown on the glowing hot stones of an awful oven, worthy of hell itself ”

“ Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury—being entirely furnished forth from the coffee-house—the circumjacent region of sitting-room was of a comparatively pastureless and shifty character: imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of putting the covers on the floor (where he fell over them) , the melted butter in the arm-chair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in the coal-scuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in the next room—where I found much of its parsley and butter in a state of congelation when I retired for the night. ”

“ We might manage to manufacture a few made dishes from the tinned things in the store-room, but entrées and savouries seem out of place in the middle of spring-cleaning, and the dining-room is impassable—a perfect block. ”

“ Then, in the dining-room, windows are absolutely useless, because dinner is always uncomfortable by daylight, and the weight of furniture effect which adapts the room for the gastronomic rites, renders it detestable as a sitting-room. ”

“ ON A YUNNAN ROAD
At noon we stopped at a handy inn or tea-house [45] for tiffin and a long rest. I was ordinarily served at the back of the big eating-room open to the street in as dignified seclusion as my cook could achieve. Rice again, with perhaps stewed fowl or tinned beef, and a dessert of jam and biscuit, usually formed my luncheon, and dinner was like unto it, save that occasionally we succeeded in securing some onions or potatoes. ”

“ The state-rooms were large and airy; beds occupied the places of the usual uncomfortable bunks; the dining-saloon was situated amidships, where the vibration of the screw was least felt; the drawing-room was arranged aft; and a dainty boudoir for the ladies extended across the whole width of the counter. The smoking-room was in a convenient position under the bridge, and the bathrooms, four in number, were luxury and completeness itself. ”

“ Well-arranged houses will have the kitchen on a level with the dining-room, and the dividing wall will be so contrived that a table, ready laid at each course, can be made to slide through it into the presence of the seated guests. An immense amount of running to and fro between kitchen and dining-room, and of lifting food and table-ware into and out of elevators, will thus be obviated, to the vast gastronomic improvement of the meal and the salvation of servants’ time.
Naturally the bedrooms of the new age will have many amenities lacking to our own. ”

“ As hot tea and coffee are now sold on the platform, quite independent of the general scrambling feeding-room, if your luncheon-basket is furnished with a cup or mug to put it in, you may of course snap your fingers at fate. ”

“ THE ART OF DINING
uman nature is so susceptible to externals, while good digestion is so dependent upon interior conditions, that all the accessories of pleasant surroundings—neatness, cheeriness, and good breeding—should be brought into requisition for the daily gathering of the family at mealtime. The dining room should be one of the airiest, choicest rooms in the house, with a pleasant outlook, and, if possible, with east windows, that the morning sun may gladden the breakfast hour with its cheering rays. ”

“ Just why there should be a folding-bed is not explained, for visitors are seldom in this room, and no man visitor, not even one's own father, would be permitted up there. The room is heated, so it is claimed, from a dark register, but through this there comes the odor of everything that is cooking, or has ever been cooked, and the warmth is quite secondary to the various smells. ”

“ She therefore decided to take her dinner in the public dining-room. As the chimney in her sitting-room had never smoked before, the proprietor of the hotel was a little puzzled. Nevertheless he prepared for her a table in a quiet corner of the dining-room downstairs. ”

“ Everybody upstairs in the main kitchen, as I made my way to the service elevator, spoke kindly and asked in the accents of at least ten different nationalities how I liked my job. Hotel folk, male and female, are indeed a friendly lot.
The dining room for the help is on the ballroom floor, which is a short flight of steps above the third. It is the third floor which is called the service floor, where our lockers are, and the chambermaids' sleeping quarters, and the recreation room.
There are, it seems, class distinctions among hotel help. The chefs eat in a dining room of their own. ”

“ It was impossible for any agency short of sheer fairyland magic to have produced overnight a room that displayed its long-term occupancy by a not-too-immaculate character. That distinctive sour smell takes a long time to permeate the furnishings of any decent hotel ”

“ In place of the old bell-pulls you find electric bells, and there is a speaking-tube between the dining-room and the kitchen, and the coal-cellar is much larger, and the bath-room has a better arrangement of taps, and you can get hot water on the stairs. ”

“ Every house needs a store-room, in which to keep tea, coffee, sugar, rice, candles, etc. It should be furnished with jars having labels, a large spoon, a fork, sugar and flour scoops, a towel, and a dish-cloth. ”

“ Each dining room is lighted either from the street or the roof, is perfectly ventilated, and has an electric bell and pneumatic tube service connecting it with the kitchen, with the market house in the basement, and with the suite of apartments below, of which it is an adjunct.
The happy householder in one of the Morning Blocks will have his choice of methods. ”

“ When you visit a friend’s newly finished Home you will be shown through all the Bath rooms, but when you leave you couldn’t, to save your soul, tell [Pg 143] where the dining room was. They seem to kinder want to camouflage or hide that nowadays. There is such little eating being done in the Homes now that a dining room is almost a lost art. Breakfast is being served in bed, Dinner at the Cabaret with dancing attached, and Lunch—no up-to-date Man would think of going anywhere but to his Clubs for lunch. ”

“ The dining-room is lofty and large, as indeed are all the public rooms. The private rooms are equal, both in size and furniture, to those of good city hotels. The arrangements for warming, lighting, washing, bathing, cooking, are such as we should expect to find in so stately an edifice. ”

“ There are no beds; retiring appliances consisting of a thin mattress and quilts which are spread out on the floor at bed-time each night and taken up again in the morning to be placed in compartments in the wall of the room. There is no dining table but in its place is a little tray, sometimes elevated on legs, brought in from the kitchen at meal times. There are no knives, forks and spoons, nor plates. In fact, everything that one would expect to find in an hotel is missing and some other device is in its place. ”

“ The old English dining-room was large in its general proportions, and heavy and rich as to its details; it was so large and impressive that there was an offshoot which took form in a breakfast-room. In our homes at this time we have the compromise. Our habits of living do not demand the breakfast-room: all come to breakfast together, and the requirement is the same as for other meals. ”

“ With whatever style of costume, gloves must be worn.
A lady who expects to have many calls, and who wishes to offer refreshments, should have hot tea and coffee and a bowl of punch on a convenient table; or, better still, a silver kettle filled with bouillon standing in the hall, so that a gentleman coming in or going out can take a cup of it unsolicited. If she lives in an English basement house, this table can be in the lower dining-room. In a house three rooms deep the table and all the refreshments can be in the usual dining-room or in the upper back-parlor. ”