The Drawing-Rooms Are Always Kept Very Hot By Huge Fires Of Anthracite
Coal, And The Doors Are Left Open To Neutralise The Effect.
The
temperance at table filled me with surprise.
I very seldom saw any
beverage but pure iced-water. There are conveniences of all descriptions
for the use of the guests. The wires of the electric telegraph, constantly
attended by a clerk, run into the hotel; porters are ever ready to take
your messages into the town; pens, paper, and ink await you in recesses in
the lobbies; a man is ever at hand to clean and brush soiled boots - in
short, there is every contrivance for abridging your labour in mounting up
stairs. But the method of avoiding the confusion and din of two or three
hundred bells must not be omitted. All the wires from the different rooms
centre at one bell, which is located in a case in the lobby, with the
mechanism seen on one side through a sheet of plate-glass. The other side
of the case is covered with numbers in rows. By each number is a small
straight piece of brass, which drops and hangs down when the bell is
sounded, displaying the number to the attention of the clerk, who sends a
waiter to the apartment, and places the piece of brass in its former
position.
Steam laundries are connected with all the large hotels. At American House
the laundry is under the management of a clerk, who records all the minor
details.
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