Can’t Keep a Hotel
A man who has no call to keep a hotel had better not try it, unless he can be certain that the horizon of his guests has always been bounded by the village hay-scales. Noble scenery is a fine thing; but mountain, nor lake, nor river, was ever enjoyable in company with an empty stomach, or one which is in the talons of the fiend, indigestion. To come to one’s meal with loathing, and eat because we must, or starve, and then hurry from grease and saleratus as soon as possible, is not the best receipt a landlord can use to insure a good class of customers for another season. He may think it of no consequence that his garden, if he have one, be as full of nettles as of flowers; that the walks have more pig-weed than gravel in them; that his out-buildings are more conspicuous than any other object both to the eye and nose; and that the grass-plats about the house are strewn with perpetual rags, paper, and old boots, which a fervid August sun is not generally inclined to mitigate.
He may “take things easy” when his guests, having engaged the hotel-carriage and horses for a ride are still standing on the piazza waiting half an hour past the time; and when, on its dilatory appearance, the harness is found giving out at the last minute, having been patched and repatched in a slovenly manner on uncounted previous rides; while the golden sunset, on which his guests had reckoned, is spent in a fruitless search for that hammer and those nails, which elude all pursuit. He may think it good policy to keep his regular boarders waiting for their meals an hour past the appointed time, while hungry children fret for sustenance, because new-comers will then appear, and this stratagem will save the trouble of preparing two meals. He may do all that if he will; but he must remember that every disgusted guest who leaves his establishment will prevent many from coming to it; and that with such a short-sighted policy he will soon find “his occupation gone.”
Keeping a hotel is a gift, as much as poetry, or sculpture, or painting. I might name men whose hotels have attained perfection under their wise, cleanly, and systematic ordering; but perfect as they are, I, for one, am not employed to advertise them over the length and breadth of the land in the New York Ledger. Suffice it to say, that I have slept on their lovely beds, and had four towels a day to wash my hands on. That I had a roomy wardrobe for such of my clothes as I desired to set free from my trunk. That the looking glass was not located in the darkest corner of the room, or placed so high that I had to stand on tip-toe, or so low that I had to get on my knees to myself. That the coffee was not made of split peas. That the fried potatoes even an angel like me might eat. That the meats were cooked in a Christian manner, and the bread guiltless of any abominable “Sal”—anything. That the pastry, which I never touch, looked good for those who like it; and that the ale—oh! the ale was “divine.” That in the spots where cleanliness might not be looked for, there it reigned. That no chambermaid came with scraping broom against my door, at daylight, to rouse me from my slumbers, and shuffle and flirt with the boot-and-shoe collectors at the different doors. That no “pictures” of ambitious artists upon the walls gave me the nightmare. And, oh! more—far more than this, that the well-mannered landlord never made a menagerie—show—of any “lion,” or lioness, in his house, by labelling the same, on the instant of their appearance, in dining-hall or parlor, for the unwinking stare of the curious.
Of course, such a house needs money as well as an artist-master to carry it on. Of course, guests who register their names there, must foot the cost of all this outlay on their bills.
One can buy a bonnet at a pawn-shop, if one is satisfied only with cheapness; but the dainty, artistic fingers, which blend colors and fabrics with the lightness and brightness of inspiration, cannot be expected to sell so much talent at a pawnbroker’s price.
Your physician, who stays in your house only five minutes, charges you, perhaps, fifteen dollars. You stare wildly at the amount; but you do not take into account the human bodies he has overhauled, and the libraries and lectures he has mastered to arrive at the knowledge which he has concentrated for your benefit in that brief five minutes. In homely phrase, “you pays your money and you takes your choice.” Or, “he is a good-natured man, but he can’t keep a hotel,” nor will people stay with him long, though Paradise lies out-doors.
Women Lovers.—Perhaps you don’t know it, but there are women that fall in love with each other. Woe be to the unfortunate she who does the courting! All the cussedness of ingenuity peculiar to the sex is employed by “the other party” in tormenting her. She will flirt with women by the score who are brighter and handsomer than her victim. She will call on them oftener. She will praise their best bonnet, and go into ecstasies over their dresses. She will write them more pink notes, and wear their “tin types;” and when despair has culminated, and sore-hearted Araminta takes to her bed in consequence, then only will this conquering she, step off her pedestal to pick up her dead and wounded. But then women must keep their hand in. Practice makes perfect.