St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1902-12-20
NO-PAY HOTEL GUESTS.
Clubs and Pllfer Pens, Papers
and Other tribes.

II wish you would have some new
| pens put on the writing table," said !;
town hotel, according to the New Yorl
Tribune.
Certainly. 'FRONT.'" and a boy wa
called and instructed to attend to thu
| matter.
Now, wouldn't you think that hi
was our star guest?' asked the clerk
IF you did think SO you would be
wrong, for he never spent cent in thii
house. He lives quite distance from
here, but comes in as regularly as the
day, reads his papers here, writes his
letters at our desks and receives his
callers in our reception rooms. He is
not alone in his class. There are hun
dreds of men just like him. They are
respectful BILE and in no way offensive
but they enjoy lot of hotel privileges
for nothing SO long that they finally
look upon them a vested rights"
The clerk told about the various
kinds of "no-pay guests" to be seen in
all the New York hotels, and said that
they were source of expense to the
hotels, but that they helped to distrib-
ute the hotel stationery, and occasion
ally some of their friends left a dollar
there.
1.-The man with the long hair over
there" said the clerk, pointing to a
distinguished looking man who lolled
in an easy chair with an air of propri-
etorship, sis one of our regular
guests. His speciality is newspapers.
He has his breakfast at coffee and
cakes place near by, and comes early
every morning. He sits about with his
eyes half closed, apparently obliyious
to all around him, until some one lays
Gown paper and walks away.
Then he will jump for the paper
quick as a flash and begin to read.
While he is reading he keeps an eye
on the others in the room. and as pa
pers are cast aside he adds to his
store, but when he has finished read
ing he leaves the papers in the reading
room, and some Of his fellow regulars
carry them away. At the writing desks
our expense for stationery is looked
upon as legitimate, but there is one
feature that goes little beyond the
limit, and is rather exasperating.
That is the pilfering.
''Penholders, with pens and without
pens, pens new and old, and blotters in
all stages. are carried away in great
quantities. A man who is known as
the professor in the hotels in this
neighborhood, probably because he
was once a school-teacher, used to sit
around writing table for long time
every day, pretending to read, but he
really watched for an opportunity to
conceal new blotter in the folds of
his paper. When this had been ac-
complished he folded up the paper and
walked out. What he wanted the
paper for don't know, because he did
all of his writing here. One day ]
called him aside and told him that he
must stay away. He asked no ques-
lions, but he understood why. l am
sure, however, that his place as blot
ter pilferer has been filled"
In the winter these hotel louEgers
make the public rooms their club, and
in warm weather they cannot be dis
tinguished from the real guests in the
fresh air parts of the hotels.
'Of course" said the clerk, "if we
would allow everyone to make our
house his headquarters we would soon
have no room for our guests, but we do
not. Our 'sitters' are reputable peo-
pie who have no business to occupy
their time; old men whose day has
passed or men who are waiting for
something to turn up, and l am sure
that they are all honest people, even if
they do occasionally take few pens
and other articles of stationery or the
daily papers.
''This class belongs to a New York
hotel as much as that other class
which consists of men who stand
around the ticker all day figuring how
much money could have been made if
a certain amount had been invested on
q certain stock. These people never
speculate, because they have no
money, but they haunt the hotel. tick
err, and live in hopes some day to play
the game again which they understand
so much better now than they did when
they played it before"