Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1893-04-20
|ONE KIND OF A BEAT.
|Hs HAuN1s HOTELS AND cooLLY
TAKES MANY PRIVILEGES.

How He Develops From Telephone User
10 Full Pledged Guest Through inter
esting stAx~.-A Type of BesgAr That Is
Hard tn Put Down.
among the peculiar animals that in
fest large cities. said the clerk at one of
the big hotels this morning. lis the hotel
beat. He is product of large towns
anu grows and fattens with the hberali-
" Of the landlords He enjoys all the
privileges Of guests except that of sleep
ing in one of the beds and getting regu-
lar meals. yet he never pays a cent for
the accommodations. and although he
Invariably gets ousted he is cheerful
and transfers his patronage 10 some 9TH
er hotel.
mo. l don't refer to the man who
beats his board bill. The man speak
of never registers. He is type In his
nlil,ler form he is neighboring business
man or attorney who finds it inconven-
lent TO have a telephone put up in his
office. and SO uses ours regularly. That
is :. little thing, and we don't mind il
much, but the idea grows on some men.
From using our telephone. most of
them drift up against the water cooler
especially in hot weather That is ali
right. too. but from the water cooler the
way is short 10 the toilet rooms. The
novice will be modest in his use Of the
toilet rooms and deal slightly with the
towels, wiping on those that hang up
But as the days progress. and the novelty
Of the thing wears away, most of them
get bolder and help themselves to the
| clean towels on the shelves. Some ho-
tels have porters in the toilet rooms who
advance and give every man who enters
a wishing
This is supposed to make the beats
feel ashamed and extract tip at least
But does il! Bless you, no. The beat is
one of the most graceful posers for the
broom man, and it is SO commonplace to
| thank the porter he does not do it. Pay
for getting his boots BACKED? Well
that shows that you don't know the beat
He blacks his own, with the portcrs ap
paratus of course. but he Stops to the
manual labor. as lie knows that even the
guests pay for having their boots shined
The GOODNESS with which he borrows the
brushes is worth the price of shine.
At first he takes only the brush, but he
swiftly reaches the point of taking all
the backing he can use.
Bless Won, no, lie does not stop nj
backing his shoes! If that We're all, we
could forgive him. Having put his
person INTO good trim he feels like writ
ing Il letter. Do you know that there
are fellows living at cheap boarding
houses who write all their letters at first
class hotels, and thus give their friends
ut distance the idea that they hive
there? Yes. it is even so, and some of
them 20 so far as to have their mail ad
dressed here. AT first these fellows
slide quietly into the writing room and
use what chance supply of paper and
envelopes they find there, but as the
the novelty wears of they do not hest
tate 10 come to the desk and ask for
papQr Yes. and occasionally n beat
viii object 10 the quality of the paper.
"Oh, yes, when lie gets to hat point he
is almost graduated from that particular
hotel. but he takes few n.ore degrees
Often he has made the clerk feel ashamed
for giving out such poor stationery. He
take II loaf into the parlor, where after
awhile he VIII occasionally have his
friends from the country call and wait
for him.
NO. that is not the last course. His
las. dealings with the hotel are through
the dining room. Few ever get to this
s;a.se. however but that makes it all the
better tor III. few who are blessed with
such a superabundance Of impotence.
They have but little competition.
Having become thoroughly accus-
toned to the usages of the hotel, the
beat rides up the elevator to a room he
knows to be empty. The elevator boy
of course does not watch him as he
walks briskly through the hall several
times and then summons the cab and
descends to the dining room floor See
ing him come down stairs from the Gle
yator the doorkeeper returns the gra-
cioGs smile with which he pays for his
meal and lets him pass unhindered.
Once in, he goes through the bill of fare
in the most approved style.
He seldom tries to get more than a
meal at long intervals, for he invariably
gets caught after he has eaten five or six
meals. Then, knowing his character and
how useless it would be to sue him for
the price of the meals, we simply con
duct him to the entrance and have a
stout porter kick him from the thresh-
old Then we rest contented till some
other sharper makes sucker Of US.
mo, you can't rank the beat with the
hotel swindler. This latter man gets ac-
commodations under false pretenses and
runs the risk of going to jail. There is
something manly about that, but the
beat runs no risk of Jail. He simply does
whatever we will let him do, and if he
beats us We alone are to blame and must
bear the loss. Cincinnati Times-Star