Hotel Keeping
by
Fortunes are made–very readily, it is said, in our large cities, by Hotel keeping. It does look money-making business to a great many people, who stop in a large hotel a day or two, and perhaps, after eating about two meals out of six–walking in quietly and walking out quietly–no fuss, no feathers, find themselves taxed four or five dollars!
We have had occasion to know something of travel and travellers, hotels, hotel-keepers and their bills, and it has now and then entered our head that money was or could be made–in the hotel business. We have stopped in houses where we honestly concluded–we got our money’s worth, and we have again had reason to believe ourselves grossly shaved, in a “first-class” hotel, at two dollars a day–all hurry-scurry, poked up in the cock-loft, mid bugs, dirt, heat and effluvia, very little better than a Dutch tavern in fly time.
We did not fail to observe at the same time, that cool impudence and clamor had a most mollifying effect upon landlord and his attaches, the tinsel and mere electrotypes passing for real bullion, galvanized hums by their noise and pretensions faring fifty per cent. better for the same price –than the more republican, quiet and human wayfarer.
Under such auspices, it is not at all wonderful that ourself and scores of others, paying two dollars and a half per diem, got what we could catch, while Kossuth, and a score of his followers, fared and were favored like princes of a monarchical realm–“though all dead heads! “
Hotels now-a-days must be showy, abounding in tin foil, Dutch metal and gamboge, a thousand of the “modern improvements”–mere clap-trap, and as foreign to the solid comforts of solid people, as icebergs to Norwegians or “east winds” to the consumptive. Without the show, they would be quite deserted; men will pay for this show, must pay for it, and all this show costs money; Turkey carpets, life-size mirrors, ottomans and marble slabs, from dome to kitchen, draw well, and those who indulge in the dance, must pay the piper.
The fact is, most people understand these things about as well as we do, and it but remains for us to give a daguerreotype of a few customers which landlords or their clerks and servants now and then meet. The conductor of one of our first-class houses, gives us such a truly piquant and matter-of-fact picture of his experience, that we up and copy it, believing, as we do, that the reader will see some information and amusement in the subject.
A fussy fellow takes it into his head that he will go on a little tour, he pockets a few dollars and a clean dickey or two, and–comes to town. He’s no green horn–O! no, he ain’t, he has been around some–he has, and knows a thing or two, and something over. He is dumped out of the cars with hundreds of others, in the great depots, and is assailed by vociferous whips who, in quest of stray dimes, watch the incoming trains and shout and bawl–
“Eh ‘up! Tremont House!”
“Up– a! American House–right away!”
“Ha! up! Right off for the Revere!”
“Here’s the coach–already for the United States!”
“Yee ‘up! now we go, git in, best house in town, all ready for the Winthrop House!”
“Eh ‘up, ha! now we are off, for the Pavilion!”
“Exchange Coffee House–dollar a day, four meals, no extra charge–right along this way, sir!”
“Hoo- ray, this coach–take you right up, Exchange Hotel!”
“Jump in, tickets for your baggage, sir, take you up–right off, best house in town, hot supper waitin’–way for the Adams House!”