The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-24
HOTEL CLERK
DOES CATCH i3-HIS SUFFER-
 INGS


 and Folks With Memories Who Fear
 spookS-Bnt Women Are Worst of All, Says suavIiy in the Hotel Of-
 fee.
 That was an albright narrative in last Sundays Sun about the snags that the hotel manager runs into in the course of a days work. But the day of the hotel manager is one long dream of
 hammock-swinging, hours and jugs be- meath the bough compared with the diurnal whizz of the average man be- hind the desk.' said New York hotel clerk who is famed over the land for his patience and suavity.
 The hotel manager can get away, The man behind the desk cant. When things begin to get a little too swift for the manager he can point both hands to the zenith and mentally declare ev- erything off, clap on his hat and rush out into the air to cool off. But the man behind the desk has got to stay right there and fight 'em until the end of his watch
 If there's any known job that's cal culated to cause the man holding 1t down to long hundreds of times over to be sitting alongside some little old creek a-fshin' that jobs the hotel clerks
 Come up to my flat some day and I'll give you copy of my little brochure entitled Eighteen Thousand Immemorial Kicks of Hotel Guests For the next edition I'm going to am plify the treatise and make it SO,OOO kicks. I'm taking over-doses of nerve tonic right now for the purpose cf haul ing myself together from the effects ot a kick that spread all over the house only yesterday
 Tt all fell on me, The manager saw the impending simoom, and he passed me the vindictive smile and went out for drive on the Speedway until he knew it would be all over It was about the water.
 Every drop of water used in this house is filtered. Yesterday morning the Altering apparatus curled up on us and had to be taken aprt for repairs It just happened that coincidentally with the temporary suspension of busi- ness of the Altering layout the water was turned off on us for an hour owing to ab reak in the pipe caused by sub way blast
 Well for about an hour after the water was turned on again the fluid was of about the color of a passe blood or ange and the consistency of maple syrup-and. of course, this had to hap pen when our Altering plant was being with in sections by tired plumbers.
 "You ought to have heard them pile into me, They came focking from all over the house, and they all but ac- cused me of maliciously making my way to the reservoir and hurling half a. ton of oclire or shellac into it. They wouldn't listen to any explanation Of any kind. The manager, as I say, fore seeing the wrath to come, had tucked, and I got it all One old Englishman yelled at me that hew as going to write to the Times-London Times, y'knaw- about the infamy, and so I've got first-rate, even money chance of being held up to odium in the pages of the before the gaze of my friends of the American colony in Lon don.
 There's an amiable title fiction, uni current, that commercial trav- ellers are a jolly, happy go-luckv lot and as easy to get on with as shaking the jelly of piece of lemon meringue pie with fork. There are few dream Ter notions than this, The drummers have got a kick coming for every hour of the dial and few of them ever per init a chance to make a kick to get | away from them.
 Most of them posses a rooted idea, | amounting to an obsession. that they've | got perpetual and perennial mortgages | on certain roms in the hotels they pa .ronize on their rounds. They wire | ahead couple of days, as rule, for | my roOm,' and when the drummer who | 1oes this arrives at his hotel and finds [ hat his room is occupied he invariably ! puts up snort that would make any | thing of that kind in Mexican bull | ring sound like the sneeze of a snail
 IlN lSI | ititlIlilSt el lllllt DlI NHtH | he clerk tells him that the individual . his room is going to give it | ID in a few hours. and he mumbles lark forecastings as to what would | happen to the hotel supposine hat he (the drummer) should take it | nto his head to pack his grip across the way to the other house.
 "Then, the drummers are nearly al- ways in a state of grOuch about their nail and telegrams If, when they ar i've they don't find waiting for them n the rack stack of letters and de- atches from their firms they give you i he meaninef ful goze which plainlv hints heir suspicion that you've withheld hese communications from them for designing. if not criminal, purposes of ,our own.
 "Then, the superstitions about num- ,ers gives us many q bad quarter of an lour per annum. There's no No. 13 oom in this house. The room that for nerly had that number was renumber- d years ago because everybody side topped it and wouldn't have it on any consideration. And vet. every once in