The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1874-05-28
The Hotel Clerk.

/ can shake hands with governor, sit
beside an alderman, and smoke with q
State senator, and never feel my little
ness, but when / come to stand in the
presence of the modern hotel clerk, ]
feel that awe and inferiority which tour
lists feel as they stand in the Yosemite
Valley, and look up at the mountain tops
thousand feet above.
There is something about that young
man standing behind the Office counter
of first-class hotel, which is calculated
to hold the common man at distance
you may gaze at him if you wish to--in
fact he is there to be gazed at---but don't
attempt to be familiar. / would as soon
think of dining with the crater of vol
cano as of going up extending hand to
hotel clerk, and asking him if his fam
lily were enjoying tolerable good health.
/ sometimes dream of being thus familiar,
and when l wake up feel as If had
been frozen.
The dignity, asperity and condescen-
sion of the modern hotel clerk! Did
you ever notice how he resents the at
tempted familiarity of travellers? If a
man calls him "old boy" or yells, "Say,
you feller therew no well-bred clerk lets
on that the hears. He goes right on
reading the morning paper, and finally
that familiar traveller has to put on q
beseeching look, and timidly ask:
Please, mister, will you kindly per-
nit me to disturb you while humbly
inquire if the New York train leaves at
eight o'clock, or at halfpast?'
The clerk will raise his eyes from the
paper, drop them, raise them to the clock,
gently move them around the room, and
finally reply:
81 guess So"
With what dignity they receive and
assign guests. If the traveller asks for
room on the first floor, on account of his
lame leg, the clerk lays back on his dig
nifty and assigns him to the top story as
punishment, and if all the earthquakes
which ever quaked were to attempt to
alter that clerks determination, they
would get beaten.
used to believe that hotel clerks were
like hotel walters, and that bribe would
flch 'em, but l found out my error when
trying to pass a crumpled ten-cent note
into the young mans hand; he drew
back with such look of scorn and con-
tempt on his face that didn't dare to
register at all, but slept in barn and
breakfasted on cheese and crackers. /
heard afterward that he had been killed
by a railroad collision, but l don't see
how any such thing could have disturbed
his dignity.
There are times when the hotel clerk
will unbend. 1t is when traveller says
that he has wandered all over the world,
stOpped at all kinds of hotels, and seen
all sorts of clerks, but yet in all his ex-
perience he has never seen such hotel
and such clerk as that. There are well
authenticated accounts of at least two
clerks, who after being thus addressed,
allowed something like a smile to cross
their faces, as they offered the persons
addressing them five-cent cigar
l can not forget the case of young
Templeton; he was clerk of the Grand
Duke, and during the eleven yearsof SER
vice in that position he had never been
known to smile, or to answer civil
question when he could help it. Every
body thought that he owned the hotel,
and everybody took off their hats to him,
and approached him with awe and
trembling. He died one day, though l
don't see how death dared to fool around
him. l was on the coroner's jury, which
rendered verdict that "the deceased
came to his death from an overplus of
lofty grandeur, hastened by too large an
amount of unbending top-loftiness.