HOTEL LIFE IN NEW YORK.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 11631, 4 November 1887, Page 2

HOTEL LIFE IN NEW YORK.

«_ » T ■ Thn life of the Arabian Nights is not more unlike ordinary London life than one days' hotel life in New York. We seemed to live in public. Tho hotel corridor is a microcoemic city with its groups of politicians and financiers, its buzz of talk, its telegraph and post offices, its stalls for books and papers, and its teeming life. Busy people rise early, and begin their day's calls before most Londoners are out of bed. The calling goes on all day, and one seems perpetually re » oeiving or paying visit. Both the physical and mental atmosphere of New York are fatiguing. Everything is at high pressure. The noise, bustle, and sense of " rash " are exhanstiag tolthe nerves. The women look frail and -willowy and highly strung. The men have a curious look of wiry alertness combined with spirituality, whioh seems to me characteristic of tbe Amerioan type. The heat while we were in town was intense —greater than anything I have felt out of the tropics. Locomotion is extremely difficult. There are very few cabs, and what there are are to? expensive for even magnificent Amerioan purses. The streets are so ill-paved, and so entirly given up in the principal thoroughfares to tramoar traffic that a-carriage would be of little use except in the cross streets and quite the upper part of the town.; It puzzles me how the New York ladies get about; for eren in the fashionable part?, the sooial business, which one gets through so easily in London, must be oondncted at an immense expenditure of time and horseflesh, to say nothing of carriage springs and of physical dfscomforb. The " smart" people had not come back from the watering-places, and I saw no signs of fashionable life. My experience of party-going at this time in New York brought me to the oonolnsion that under su h conditions it was not to be lightly undertaken. One evening two receptions of the literary kind had to be done between eight and eleven, and the problem was how to accomplish them. Our natural instinct was to take a carriage for the night f but on enquiring rather late at the office of the hotel, we learned that the first plaoe to which we were bound was a long; way up town, that it would take more than an hour by the elevated railway and avoid being shaken to pieces into the bargain. Accordingly I compromised the matter of evening ehoee, tucked up my gown, cloaked and hooded, set forth with my two companions for the elevated cars. We got in at 23rd»street; we were to alight at 121«t-6treet, Nearly a hundred streets to i be passed I We felt glad that we had not taken that carriage, in whioh case to , accomplish all we wanted would have been a physical imposibility. As a means of transit to a patry, however, the elevated [ oars oan hardly be oalled agreeable. There was an amusing incongruity ia the notion of" doing ffociety "in tho company of an ' American scavenger carrying a bundle of 1 brooms who sat beside me —and expectorated 1 freely. We were pleased when that man ' got np. 121 st street was a long way still ' from the place to which we were bound. ; The streets were ilMighted, the houses f badly numbered, or not numbered at all. . After wandering aimlessly for a little i while, with skirts draggling in the dust • and shreds of jet embroidery marking my , path, I Bub3ided oa a heap of bricks on the , Bidewalk and waited while Campbell walked up the steps or several of the houses, struck a matcb or two, and inspected \ the numbers till he bad found the right one. ■ It waa a very pleasant gathering, and we much enjoyed it; but 46th»street, our next destination, was weighing on our minds, ' and after half an hour we tramped off to thi i cars again. We found ourselves at length , at what might almost have been a London • party of the artistic Bohemiam sort, for i , there were several of the familiar faces of i Inst season ; and even the mummies who had. delighted us in London charmed us , here. Some of the ladies wore bonnets, and all appeared to have b-ought them j and when the party was over, the cara | and the dismal famp seemed a general [ experience. — Mrs (Jampbell Praed in ' Temple Bar. 1 ' i i