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334 Their distinguishing features are that the greater part of their guests are travellers, but lodgers & boarders; & that they have one fixed charge for all of so many dollars a day. The dearest I entered was the Fifth Avenue Hotel at New York, which charged five dollars a day; the board consisting of five such meals as no Hotel in England, or Europe, cd supply without bankruptcy. They are enabled to do this, because they have to supply these meals for several hundred persons. And they have this large number of guests, because multitudes of families, that they may escape the expense & annoyances of housekeeping, live in the hotels; & multitudes of men in business, keeping only a counting house, or a store in the City do the same. The cheapest I was ever in charged three dollars & and half a day. The service is so well organized in these Hotels, that you may come, or go, at any hour of the night; & you can get your linen washed & returned to your room in a few hours?. While dressing one morning at the Sherman House at Chicago, I sent out my linen to the laundry; on going back to my room at half past eleven, I found that it had been washed & returned. This rapidity with which the washing of linen is performed in American enables one to travel with much less than wd be required in Europe; & it explains why one often sees people travelling in America with no more than they can carry in a little hand bag, called in the language of the country a satchel.