AMERICA TO-DAY
fare is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes inappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. Take, again, the harmless, necessary operation of shaving. In a good English barber's shop it is a brief and not unpleasant process; in an American "tonsorial parlour" it is a lingering and costly torture. One of the many reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely people rather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which they submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England one grudges five minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; in America one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (with the executioner's tip)[1] from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge would be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endless processes to which one is subjected;
- ↑ I had read or been told that the tip system did not obtain in America, except in the case of negroes and waiters. A very few days in New York undeceived me. I went twice to a barber's shop in the basement of the house in which I lived, paid fifteen cents to be shaved, and gave the operator nothing; but at my second visit I found myself so lowered upon by that portly and heavy-moustached citizen that I never again ventured to place myself under his razor, but went to a more distant establishment and tipped from the outset. There are, indeed, certain classes of people—railroad conductors for instance—who do not expect the tips which in England they consider their due; but, according to my experience, the safe rule in America is "when in doubt tip."
74
