The Georgetown news., 1856-05-15
The st. BobIlnk Hotel.

OC' NICHoidS dOlei, New 0rk, Which con-
tainS some hard hits at the manners and ne
cullaritles Of the universal Yankee nation" :"
OF which the underadded paragraphs are d
sample
The Saint Boblink House is a mighty
edifice, of pure white marble Saint Bob
link is much too noble saint to be canon
ised in compo. The windows sparkle like
gems IN queens diadem, and seem as nu-
merous as the facets in a crystal. Wide
yawning is the doorway; countless are the
| columns; lofty and aerial the balconies; WV
idly verdant the verandahs and high up
above the tOpmOSt bulustrade floats, Sel.aS
sertingly in the air, the great banner Of the
Stars and Stripes. This is an hotel with
a vengerce; but run not away with the i'm
preston that it is unique--a solitary mon
ster, like the Sphinx, the Grand Hotel du
Louvre, or the Great Western Hotel, Pad
dington. 1t has brothers, and cousins, and
children as capacious, if not more So than
Itself, on either side, and up and down, as far
as the eye can reach, in the great transat-
lantic Boulevard Straightway. The
st. Boblnk House is but one among an
army of colossal notes.-the Parvarer
House, the St. HOminy House, the Golden
Gate House, the Amalgamated Squash
Hotel, and other high-sounding hosteIries
The st. Boblink is vast eating and drink
ing factory; an Eastern caravanserai opened
up by American enterprise; an emperor's
palace let out in room lots at three dollars
day; a Vatican for voyagers
People say that there are above two thou
sand rooms in that same Vatican. /
shouldn't like to bet; but to guess, from the
hOrdes of travellers that the St. BobIink
gives shelter to, it would really seem as
though his holiness the Pope had the small
er house OF the two. The ear of man has
not heard how many the St. Boblink would
accommodate at pinch; and no one is in a
position to dispute the boast of Washington
Mush, its landlord, (now travelling in Eu-
governess, and two ladies' maids for his
family,) that he could take the whole of
Congress in to board; provide beds, in ad-
dition, for the British House of Lords, if
they felt inclined to come over and see the
workings of the American constitution; and
find, without much trouble, shakedowns in
to the bargain for the House of Commons
For your three dollars a-day you have the
run of all the public apartments, noble
billiard room, where you may win or lose
d0llar-biils of or to eXcitable southerners
and senators in want of excitement, to your
hearts content; reading rooms, where the
ten thousand newspapers of the Union, all
printed on the largest possible paper in the
smallest possible type, are spread Oh the
green-baize tables smoking-rooms where
you may taste the flavor of real II lvanas,
or luXuriate in the mastication of the fra
grant pig-tail; writing-roOms; audience
rooms; cloak-rooms; layatories, conversation
parlors, and Observation-Disclosures. | don't
know whether they have fitted up a whit
tling room at the Saint Boblink; but | dare
say that convenience will be added to the
establishment on the return of Washington
Mush, Esquire, from Europe. AT the same
time, perhaps, it would be as well to erect
an apartment devoted exclusively to the ma
tional pastime of expectoration. AT pres
ent, for want Of special location, the whole
palace is one huge spittoon, which is incon-
venient to foreigners.
The bar-room of the Saint Boblink may
be initiated, but it can never be equalled in
Europe. No efforts of plastic art, of up
holstry ingenuity, of architectural cunning,
Of licensed-vctualling cunning could PRO
duce such a result as is here apparent. The
green velvet spring couches, with carved
oak arm-rests, that artfully invite you to
lounge; the marble mantel-p pieces and stove
tops that seem to say, seductively, "co1ne
raise your heels above the level of your
heads, and show the European stranger
row of cheYaux de frise Of black PANTS" the
rocking chairs; the dainty marble and
bronze tables, transatlantic "reminiscences
of Partisan cafes;) the arabesqued gas-burn-
ers; the cut-glass looking glasses gilt frames,
and Venetian blinds; the splendileroUs COM
mercial advertisements that so worthily
usurp the place of stupid high art pictures
and engravings; for who would not rather
see gifts, fits, fits" in chrome lithography,
or "Dr. Turnipseed's medicated mangel-
wurtzel," or ''the Patent Heracleidan De
teetive Padlocks" sumptuously framed and
glazed, than Sir Edward Landseer's "Deer-
stalking" or the Queen after Winterhalter?
But | do the bar of the Saint Boblink in
justice. There are some engravings. The
massive head of Daniel Webster lrowns up
on the sherry-cobler drinkers; proudly Tin a
print in the muddy Mississippi, defiant of
snags and sawyers, steams along the Peleg
Potter steamer, huge, hurricane-decked,
many-portholed, high-pressured, and hideous
J her engines working in sight as if her
boilers were impatient to burst, and had
come up from the engine-room to see how
many passengers there were, before burst
ing. Then there is a grand view of the
palace itself-the st. Boblink-as large as
life, tat least on the scale of half an inch to
the foot,) Autographed by Messrs, Saxony
and Mayor. The har-room has almost
made me forget the bar itself; though surely
one visit to it is sufficient to stamp it in our
remembrance forever. There, on that great