Part 14 (1/2)

”Yes,” said Tommy. ”_I've ordered some._”

At this point the waitress came up for the newcomer's order.

”I'm too tired to order, Jennie,” said he. ”Just you bring me the same as he has, and see that the buckwheats are hot.”

”_Gee! Buckwheats!_” cried Tommy. ”_I didn't know there was buckwheats--bring me a stack of 'em too, Jennie!_”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Cannot sleep comfortably between the sheets of William James's pragmatic philosophy, dry as they are.”]

And all of this was on the American plan, at the rate of two dollars for three meals and a night's lodging! I am afraid my friend of the uncertain digestive organs belonged to the same gastronomic school as a famous war correspondent I met at my club many years ago. He was an Englishman, and was delightfully enthusiastic about everything he had found in America except our hotels.

”And even they wouldn't be so bad,” said he, ”if it wasn't for that beastly American plan upon which they're run. Why, out in San Francisco I actually had to eat and eat and eat until I was positively ill, to get ahead of the game!”

Traveling Americans are inclined to criticize the hotels of foreign countries for their lack of bathroom facilities, and I recall an occasion in Rome some years ago when I found the act of taking a dip in the one bathroom the hotel provided almost as formal a function as a presentation at the Vatican, involving a series of escorts from my room to the dark little hole on an upper floor where the tub was kept, far greater in number than those involved in my progress from the American college to the papal presence.

Indeed, the only occasion I can recall when in a foreign country I was able to get a bath without encountering all sorts of obstacles was also in Rome, four years ago, when I endeavored to order a bottle of mineral water in my choicest Italian, and got a bath instead, the whiskered male chambermaid of whom I ordered it having little familiarity with his own tongue as ”she was spoke” by an American.

But precisely similar conditions exist in this country. An eminent singer in one of his famous poems lamented the difficulty of getting the Time, the Place, and the Girl together; but if he had ever gone on the Chautauqua circuit in this land I fear he would have written also of the well nigh impossible operation of getting the Time, the Place, and the Tub together; and I may add that I wish a law might be pa.s.sed requiring hotels that do provide bathing facilities to supply also at least one towel that is visible to the naked eye.

The story of the man who asked an Indiana hotel clerk to ”give” him ”a room and a bath,” to be greeted by the instant response, ”_We'll give you the room; but you'll have to wash yourself_,” contains quite as much truth as humor. I had to forego my dip in a Southern hotel on one morning because ”_the last feller that took a bath here run off with the key to the door_,” and then on the following morning when the bathroom door had been forced open I found the tub constructed of tiles, with a lush growth of morning glory vines sprouting up between them.

When in an Ohio hotel several years ago, having insisted upon a room with a bath, I found the latter in a dark cubbyhole whose doors and windows had evidently not been opened for months. Atmospherically speaking, the Black Hole of Calcutta was a thing of sweetness and light compared to it. Nearly suffocated, I struggled with the frosted-gla.s.s window at one side of the cell for several minutes, and finally with a supreme effort got it up: only to find that it _opened on an inner corridor of the hotel_.

And be it recorded that the heating facilities are quite on a par with these. The heating apparatus of most hotels is either missing altogether, or terrifying in character. The latter sort is especially in evidence in the natural gas regions, where that useful commodity is used with an airy carelessness that inspires dreadful forebodings.

I shall never forget my first introduction to natural gas as a heating proposition. It was in an historic edifice in Ohio, which I shall not name; for it has already been sufficiently advertised by its ”loving friends.” Suffice it to say that by some strange oversight of Nature it still stands. To get to my room, in the first place I was compelled to rise several flights in an elevator whose lift was as uncertain as its years, and then with the aid of a hallboy to thread an intricate maze of interlocking corridors alongside of which the Dedalian Labyrinth was simplicity itself. Arrived finally in the room a.s.signed to me, I found it dark, damp, and cold.

”How about a little heat here, Son?” said I, appealing to the hallboy.

”Sure!” said he.

The boy faded into the gloom of the far end of the room, leaned over, and tugged away vigorously for a few moments on a screw in the baseboard, and then standing back about two feet he began to bombard the wall with lighted matches--the kind which light only on the seat of a bellboy's trousers. I shall not attempt to say how many of these he lit and threw at the wall before anything happened. It seemed to be an appalling number, and considering the manifest inflammability of the building, and the height of my room from the ground, it made me very nervous.

”What the d.i.c.kens are you doing?” said I.

But there was neither time nor need for his answer. One well projected match seemed to hit the particular bullseye he was aiming at. There came a boom and a flash, and in a second I saw a half-dozen sizable flames creeping upward from the floor to a point about breast high on the wall, where by some strange miracle the conflagration stopped.

”Nacheril gas!” said the boy, with a grin, as he departed.

It had been my intention to remain overnight in that city; but when I realized that that same process was probably going on in at least a dozen other apartments, above, beside, and below me, I suddenly decided to return to New York on the night train. I will take my chances on the future life; but while I live, breathe, and have my being upon this terrestrial orb I believe in getting fire risks down to their lowest reducible minimum by adopting a policy of complete avoidance.

Our clever newspaper humorists have made a good deal of capital out of the haughty hotel clerk with the diamond stud; but I must confess that I have never yet encountered this individual in the wide swath of my wanderings. Save in one or two places, I have found on the contrary a genial solicitude for my welfare, wholly undecorated as to s.h.i.+rt-front--often indeed without the s.h.i.+rt-front itself--which has more than offset such shortcomings as were characteristic of the inns over whose desks they presided.

On one occasion in Indianapolis I encountered what seemed at first to be a heartless lack of appreciation and cordial recognition on my arrival; but it was more than compensated for in the end, and I should add was rather the result of a too high expectation on my own part than the fault of the man behind the register. I had long wished to visit Indianapolis, largely because of its national reputation as a literary center. A State that has produced so many authors of high distinction as have come out of Indiana, with her General Lew Wallace, her James Whitcomb Riley, Charles Major, Meredith Nicholson, George Ade, Booth Tarkington, and those two purveyors of wholesome fiction and good, clean humor, the McCutcheon brothers, is ent.i.tled to some of the laureled interest of a literary Mecca, and I registered at the Claypool in my boldest hand, quietly and confidently expecting some immediate recognition, such as a not altogether unknown worker on the slopes of Parna.s.sus might expect to receive on arriving at Olympus.

The room clerk whisked the register round and studied the inscription for a moment. ”What's that--Boggs?” he inquired.

”No,” said I, my crest falling a bit, ”Bangs--John Ken--”

”Oh,” said he, bringing his hand down heavily on the bell. ”Front, show this gentleman to number three hundred and nine.”