This Inscription Was To Me A Moment Of Misery Which
I Could Never Go Through With Equanimity.
As the name is written,
and as the request for accommodation is made, half a dozen loungers
look over your name and listen to what you say.
They listen
attentively, and spell your name carefully, but the great man behind
the bar does not seem to listen or to heed you; your destiny is
never imparted to you on the instant. If your wife or any other
woman be with you - the word "lady" is made so absolutely distasteful
in American hotels that I cannot bring myself to use it in writing
of them - she has been carried off to a lady's waiting room, and
there remains in august wretchedness till the great man at the bar
shall have decided on her fate. I have never been quite able to
fathom the mystery of these delays. I think they must have
originated in the necessity of waiting to see what might be the
influx of travelers at the moment, and then have become exaggerated
and brought to their present normal state by the gratified feeling
of almost divine power with which for the time it invests that
despotic arbiter. I have found it always the same, though arriving
with no crowd, by a conveyance of my own, when no other expectant
guests were following me. The great man has listened to my request
in silence, with an imperturbable face, and has usually continued
his conversation with some loafing friend, who at the time is
probably scrutinizing my name in the book. I have often suffered in
patience, but patience is not specially the badge of my tribe, and I
have sometimes spoken out rather freely. If I may presume to give
advice to my traveling countrymen how to act under such
circumstances, I should recommend to them freedom of speech rather
than patience. The great man, when freely addressed, generally
opens his eyes, and selects the key of your room without further
delay. I am inclined to think that the selection will not be made
in any way to your detriment by reason of that freedom of speech.
The lady in the ballad who spoke out her own mind to Lord Bateman,
was sent to her home honorably in a coach and three. Had she held
her tongue, we are justified in presuming that she would have been
returned on a pillion behind a servant.
I have been greatly annoyed by that want of speech. I have
repeatedly asked for room, and received no syllable in return. I
have persisted in my request, and the clerk has nodded his head at
me. Until a traveler is known, these gentlemen are singularly
sparing of speech, especially in the West. The same economy of
words runs down from the great man at the office all through the
servants of the establishment. It arises, I believe, entirely from
that want of courtesy which democratic institutions create.
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