The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-09-11

EVERYBODY who has travelled Is
II familiar with the bellboy, varying in
IL type from the untidy and eternally
weary specimen inseparable from a
certain class of back country '.hotels" to
the trim and ready youth who officiates
In typical first-class metropolitan hos
telries. But in the large cities. during
the last half dozen years. the gradual
adoption of the telephone has materially
changed his iabors if not his outward APP
pearance. Now 10 the latest New York
hotel the $1,000, 900 Hotel Astor, his
eclipse is predicted; the bel1boy is to dis
appear from public view entirely and,
with others of his kind, await the call of
duty in room especially set aside for
MIN and the operators at the telephone
switchboard
This is an innovation that may or may
not find favor with other hotel proprietors.
and 1t will certainly be many years before
the familiar row of bellboys, in their smart
uniforms, cease to decorate the main
Office of the great urban caravansary
But the telephone is becoming indispensa-
BILE. No important hotel is built nowadays
without its complete telephone equipment,
and many of the older houses are put
ting in similar systems. 1t is less than
ten years since the Bell companies in
stalled the first of the hotel plants, but.
although still young enough to be classed
d1ilOuS the latest Things, the changes
they have already brought about in hotel
living are an unusually interesting ex-
ample of applied invention, carried much
farther than even Alexander Graham Bell
himself probably imagined.
The adoption of the telephone on the
large scale in which 1t has to be handled
in big hotel. where every room has it's
separate instrument and the temporary
owner may put down his gripsack and en-
ter info immediat p tiOu with his
family, business partner, anybody
else hundreds of miles distant. has pro-
duced changes in hotel living that would
strike the traveller of even ten years ago
as little short of miraculous.
The Old Bell Signals
Under the old regime the guest com
municated his wants to the office by
series of bell signals, or an electric indi
Gator, as is still the case in many even
of the large hotels of America and Europe.
The condition at its worst is illustrated
by the story told of the modern American
traveller in Venice who found on the wall
of his chamber placard reading:
One ring for ice water.
Two rings for towels
Three rings for boots.
-Four rings for chambermaid.
Five rings for porter
and underneath, in pencil, the further
statement, added by some former traveller
"and not one of them will come" One
can imagine the author of the postscript
trying the signals one after another and
finally giving it up in disgust in room
possibly not even supplied with what Bill
Nye used to describe as cast iron soap
and slippery elm towel"
Done With the Bell Ringing
All this bell signaling. which, under
the best of circumstances, consumes time
and has tendency to make the guest
feel as if he were ringing in fire alarm.
bids fair sooner or later to be done away
with not only in the larger, but In the
smaller American cities In the thorough
ly modern hosiery, no matter what the
guest wants, he now goes to the tele-
phone calls the office, states his desire.
and awaits the result. And the modern
bellboy-sometimes not boy at all. but a
man who has grown to middle life in the
SERVICES very much like an automaton
electrified by the telephone summons. He