Gilded Age Travel Correspondence

“It is a convenience that first class hotels should abolish and a sort of cheap advertisement that does no credit to the proprietor or the hotel patrons.” Nevertheless, it is a convenience of which not a few people, usually regarded as well bred, avail themselves.

Items About Letters

“The practice of writing letters or notes at hotels on paper with a view of the house is beneath comment,” according to a feminine authority on etiquette. "No man or woman of culture would commit such an error. It is a convenience that first class hotels should abolish and a sort of cheap advertisement that does no credit to the proprietor or the hotel patrons." Nevertheless, it is a convenience of which not a few people, usually regarded as well bred, avail themselves. 

More generally practiced is the following from the same source, "When writing letters at a country house, stamp them before they are collected for the post; your host is not supposed to pay your postage. Out of town people usually have a heavy mail and can spare no time to attend to the minor details of their guests' correspondence." — The San Jose Herald, 1893

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