THE HUMOUR OF THINGS.

Shannon News, 19 May 1925, Page 4

THE HUMOUR OF THINGS.

LIVING AN HOTEL. MODERN VICTUALS EMPORIUM. (By STEPHEN LEACOCK.) It is my lot to live a great deal in hotels. And the hotels in which I live are of the sumptuous order, with marble pillars and rubber trees, and • with two girls with waving gold hair : sitting at a desk and running a tele-j phone exchange. ; There i 3 a ballroom where on nearly; any evening you cah see a dance going! on and wish you were twenty years, younger, and a concert room where j you hear an Italian basso singing an ; aria Chi Qual Chianti to a Ladies' For- j nightly musical Club. It is at such a place that I always; abide. It is generally advertised—, this kind of hotel —as the most home- j like hotel in the country. But this is; only a joke. Home is not really like that. * „

I always take care to have a room ; i and a bath. I And my experience that ! a bath comes ;in extremely handy. If any one gives you a bouquet of roses vou keep them in the bath for days perfectly fresh; or you can use it to put your overcoat in when ft you come home at night; in fact, it's handy in a dozen ways. And there'3 a tone about it! It sounds so nice to say, "I have a room and a bath at the Palatial," or "Won't you come in some time, and see me in my room and bath?" and things like that. Picking a QUawel. People think hotel life dull., This is a great mistake. In an hotel there is always some form of amusement, something to do to while away the time. Personally, I find that for pleasurable excitement the best thing in hotel life is to pick a quarrel with the head waiter In a good hotel the head waiter expects it, and is trained for it. It is part of his job. Picking a quarrel with him is quite simple; you just have him summoned over to your table and accuse him of extortion and mal-appropriation, or perversion, or arson —it dosen't matter what. All crimes are alike to him. He's been accused of all of them. His part in the quarrel is to keep on saying, "I'm very sorry, sir" —when you get yourself worked up into complete infuriation with him, then tell him you will leave the hotel.

This is supposed to crush the life right out of him. Then when you have him reduced to pulp the moment has come for suddenly discovering that he was right, and you were wrong; you give way to a burst of generous enthusiasm, call him to you and kiss him, give him Ave shillings and swear to live with'him in the hotel for ever. This little comedy can be observed going on at all times of the day between the guest and the head waiter. Profound Gastronomic Thought. But the principal charm of hotel life is the meals. What more exquisite than to draw one's chair into the breakfast table and have the pleasure of selecting breakfast out of a list of two hundred items. Every morning when I sit down in the hotel dining room tj order breakfast, I spend at least twenty minutes in deep thought over the bill of fare. At the end of it I order bacon and eggs. Very often —In fact, usually I call the water into consultation as to what kind of a suitable, agreeable, more or less novel breakfast a man might pro. fitably take. When he has done his talk, I order bacon and eggs. Sometimes I get the head waiter in on it, and atk him questions about fish. I ask him how is his sole this morning, and he says it is excellent. I ask him can he recommend his haddock, and he says lie can. As a final and definite inquiry, I ask him what about his grilled pa ice, and he says his grilled plaico is delicious; I say to him: in that case, vil! he kindly bring me some bacon and eggs.

In fact, I believe that all other men who live in hotels are like this. At every hotel I see them sitting at the breakfast table with a bill of fare in front of them, thinking deeply, with a waiter standing; behind them babbling about grilled plaice;, and in the end, I always hear the waiter say, "Bacon and eggs, yes sir." Indeed, my own opinion is that in all the hotels they don't really have anything else to eat in the place except bacon and eggs. They just write down all that stuff about grilled plaice to look well and to let the guests I think. In reality there is only bacon i and eggs. ! Dressing up a Name. Much the same thing happens at dinner. Here there is again a card of two hundred items, beginning with Potage St. Germain and ending with Gaufrettes a la Chinoise. But somewhere coiled up in it, under some name or other, is roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and I always take that. Some hotels have the effrontery to call it straight out by its name. But that is hardly fair. 1 In that case the guest is lost' at once; in the whole catalogue he sees nothing but the words roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and he rushes straight at it. But in the better hotels it is at least disguised as- Rosbif au Poudin d'York, which gives the guest a run for his money before he tracks it down. At other times it is more completely hidden as Tournedos a I'Anglaise, or Filet de Boeuf York, but dt is always there, and under one name or the other, I have eaten it every day for several years.

The most intricate business in life in an hotel is found in the method of leaving. This is a technical matter demanding long practice for its performance. As the moment approaches, the guest should lull the waiters and porters into a false sense of security by letting fall remarks about remaining for a month. This puts them off their guard and they cease to watch his coming in and going out. The next step is the quiet removal of luggage. This may be done by letting it down on a rope from the bedroohi window, but it is always possible to get it out by bribing a single porter and making him take an oath of

secrecy. One's hat, coat and stick may next be moved into some cloak room, or placed near the front door. The guest then gathers himself for a single spring past the cashier's office and shouting, "Send my bill after me to Birmingham," he leaps at one bound into a taxi and disappears in a cloud of petroleum. If this is not absolutely and exactly the way of leaving, at any rate I notice the performance being done on this model. Very often after doing thiß the guest discovers that he has left upstairs in his room a silk umbrella with a gold band round it. He never sees it again. But this is only divine justdce.