He Sends For Your Theater Tickets,
And Pays For Them; He Sends For Any Possible Article
You Can Require, Be
It a doctor, an elephant, or a
postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you will
find a subordinate
Seated with the cab-driver who will
put you in your railway compartment, buy your tickets,
have your baggage weighed, bring you the printed tags,
and tell you everything is in your bill and paid for.
At home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing
service as this only in the best hotels of our large cities;
but in Europe you get it in the mere back country-towns just
as well.
What is the secret of the portier's devotion? It is
very simple: he gets FEES, AND NO SALARY. His fee
is pretty closely regulated, too. If you stay a week,
you give him five marks - a dollar and a quarter, or about
eighteen cents a day. If you stay a month, you reduce
this average somewhat. If you stay two or three months
or longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half.
If you stay only one day, you give the portier a mark.
The head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's;
the Boots, who not only blacks your boots and brushes
your clothes, but is usually the porter and handles your
baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than the head waiter;
the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the Boots.
You fee only these four, and no one else.
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