The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-05-06
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aIr. MerrifeId Tells of Funny Things
About Future Hotel Keeping.

afr. MerrifeId Tells of Funny Things
About Future Hotel Keeping.
"The day viii come, and long before
we date our letters 1919, when the hotels
IN this country will have improvements
which will make the guests feel that
they have nothing 10 find fault with
Certainly that will be great period-a
surprising one to the much abused hotel
keeper"
E. L. Merrifeld, president of the
Hotel Keepers association, looked very
serious as he uttered these words,
sWhat will those Improvements be-?
Many, very many; but just now 1 viii
mention only one or two, lest some
hotels begin the new styles before peo-
pie are used to the change from one sya-
tenn to another. Here's one, for in
stance: The hotels will be so big in
few years that when guest gets up,
say on the twenty ninth floor, he'll find
as he steps out of the elevator that his
room is . quarter of mile away, count
ing all the halls and corners he'll have
TO travel through before he gets there.
"Well, the halls will be broad, and
electric cars, light and airy as wicker
baskets, will pass along every few min
utes. All he will have to do when he
gets on his floor is to press button
the car viii do the rest. It will whiz
down his way with the conductor at the
wheel like any cable car outdoors at
present, pick him up and-he's in his
room before he's had time to say Jack
Robinson.
"You smile. I don't, for I'm serious.
More than that, hotels will probably
have private elevators for every large
parlor room on top floors after the cleo
tric car gets behind the age
"Take space? OF course. But what
of that? The hotel keeper is supposed
TO be the only man who must spend all
he makes to benefit his guests. He does
not work for a living, like ordinary men.
Not he; his fate from boyhood is mapped
out to do everything he can to make
others happy at his expense. But to re-
sumo. The private elevator Of each
room will be soon followed if not &C
companied by pneumatic tubes fol-
trunks and baby carriages with the ba
bies in them, and smaller ones for let.
ters and bundles.
more than that. A visitor will, feel
certain, be shot up through the tubes
after the guests have seen their cards
and pipeo down, All right, send him
up 1t will be very stagelike to see an
apparent closet door fly open quickly
and the friend of your better days in
full dress and hat in hand step out as
one does in and out of carriage in the
street and greet you with a smile, How
are YOU, old man? or words to that effect
''Then think of the way overtaxed
tailors can be avoided, too, by their GUS
toners among the guests who have for
gotten to settle up. How? Easily.
There will be no hotel registry, for the
moment a guest is assigned to a room he
will probably walk up to a machine,
rattle over few keys with pen while
writing his name, and just as he signs ii
it will appear on card on the inside of
the proprietor's private Office. Names
are signed miles away now by wire OF
dispatches. Well, hotel men are close at
hand IN this signature business. nope
70 live long enough to see all the I'M
provements."
Mr.. Merrifeld's eyes twinkled as he
concluded: when the Hotel Keepers
association meets one of these great i'm
provements is to be tested. Which one
it will be don't know yet, but that the
electric car in the Railways is neal
future event in hotel improvements is
dead certainty. New York Herald