Nor Are They Called
From Some Country Or City Which May Have Been Presumed At Some Time
To Have Had Special Patronage For The Establishment.
In the
nomenclature of American hotels the specialty of American hero
worship is shown, as in the nomenclature of their children.
Every
inn is a house, and these houses are generally named after some
hero, little known probably in the world at large, but highly
estimated in that locality at the moment of the christening.
They are always built on a plan which to a European seems to be most
unnecessarily extravagant in space. It is not unfrequently the case
that the greater portion of the ground floor is occupied by rooms
and halls which make no return to the house whatever. The visitor
enters a great hall by the front door, and almost invariably finds
it full of men who are idling about, sitting round on stationary
seats, talking in a listless manner, and getting through their time
as though the place were a public lounging-room. And so it is. The
chances are that not half the crowd are guests at the hotel. I will
now follow the visitor as he makes his way up to the office. Every
hotel has an office. To call this place the bar, as I have done too
frequently, is a lamentable error. The bar is held in a separate
room appropriated solely to drinking. To the office, which is in
fact a long open bar, the guest walks up, and there inscribes his
name in a book.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 454 of 531
Words from 121535 to 121795
of 142339
