Sweep out and bring water;
then learns to "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type;
and finally rounds and completes his education with
job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves
as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter;
then as head waiter, in which position he often has
to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier;
then as portier. His trade is learned now, and by and
by he will assume the style and dignity of landlord,
and be found conducting a hotel of his own.
Now in Europe, the same as in America, when a man has
kept a hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years
as to give it a great reputation, he has his reward.
He can live prosperously on that reputation. He can let
his hotel run down to the last degree of shabbiness and
yet have it full of people all the time. For instance,
there is the Ho^tel de Ville, in Milan. It swarms with mice
and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed
it could furnish dirt enough to start another one with.
The food would create an insurrection in a poorhouse;
and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel
makes up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts
of trifles - and without making any denials or excuses
about it, either. But the Ho^tel de Ville's old excellent
reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with travelers
who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend
to warn them.
APPENDIX B
Heidelberg Castle
Heidelberg Castle must have been very beautiful before
the French battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred
years ago. The stone is brown, with a pinkish tint,
and does not seem to stain easily. The dainty and elaborate
ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as delicately
carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a
drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house.
Many fruit and flower clusters, human heads and grim
projecting lions' heads are still as perfect in every detail
as if they were new. But the statues which are ranked
between the windows have suffered. These are life-size
statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar
grandees, clad in mail and bearing ponderous swords.
Some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow
is chopped off at the middle. There is a saying that if
a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across
the court to the castle front without saying anything,
he can made a wish and it will be fulfilled. But they
say that the truth of this thing has never had a chance
to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can
walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty
of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from
him.
