The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-05-20
WOMAN AS SHE SEEMS 10 THE HOTEL
MANS WIFE.

eff YOU have tears, shed them out
of pity for hotel manager s wife who
lives in the hotel that her husband
manages" drearily said the wife of
the manager of an apartment hotel to
her party Of luncheon guests the
other day. "The women living IN
the hotel carry all their grievances
to her and take it out on her. My
private apartment has become a sort
of general kickers' bureau.
"A while ago the filteriug plant at
the hotel my husband manages got
out Of order, and the water looked a
bit roily and muddy. Well, It seemed
as if every blessed woman in the hotel
to whom l had been casually intro-
duced rushed to my rooms to hold
me personally accountable.
"'Why, I wouldn't even bathe my
dog in such looking water I half 9
dozen OF them told me, with the
sourest imaginable face as if it con-
cerned me in the least what kind of
water they used to bathe their dogs.
"I told them that my faucets gush-
ed roily water too, but that ! myself
had to bathe in it or go unbathed
until the filtering apparatus was re-
paired. That didn't appease them in
the least. I didn't want to be rude,
and / couldn't come out plainly and
tell them that the state of the water
was circumstance over which I ex-
ercised no control whatever, and that
the breakdown Of the fltering plant
was matter with which l had abso-
lutely nothing to do; and so just
had to sit and listen to their walls and
do the best I could to comfort them.
"The fish at dinner one day wasn't
exactly up to the mark. Five of the
women guests, with whom I was
upon mere nodding terms, hustled
straight to my rooms after dinner.
"Where did the house get such
dreadful fish,? they asked me breath
lessly, impaling me with reproachful
gazes.
IT told them that the fish had been
purchased by the steward, probably.
"sBut he shouldn't have purchased
bad fish 7 they all shrieked at me.
There ought to be somebody to see
that such fish doesn't get on the
table 1 couldn't tell them that I
had absolutely nothing to do with the
management of the hotel; that had
never set foot in the kitchen. If I
had told them that they would have
gone off among themselves and called
me 'snippy' and stuck up Women
in family hotel, you see, don't con-
slider that the hotel managers wife
has any right or license to live in the
hotel as a guest. They take it that
she ought naturally to do something
for her board and keep, and the
something that they expect her to
do is to stand for all of their walls
and means over the grievous and aw-
full mismanagement of the house.
ct was at dinner in the hotel dining
room the other evening, when one of
the new tabby guests, a woman whom
I had only met once, left her table
and came over to mine.
"'Do you know, she asked me,
most resentfully, that the girl hasn't
put any towels in my room yet to.
day, and here it is 7 o'clock in the
evening? 1 wish you would bring
some towels up to my room or have
somebody bring Them and then she
Haunted back to her own table, Civ
ing me no opportunity to tell her-as
surely should have told her-that
any time she found me running a
hotel corridor with pile of towels on
my arm distributing them, that time
would be contemporaneous with the
fall of two feet of purple snow in
mid-August.
"And the worst of it is that every
time I tell my husband how all the
women in the house hold me per-
sonally responsible for everything
that goes wrong in the house, he only
grins and then Fuckers up his lips
and plaintively whistles the first few
bars of that familiar air, Somebody
Has Got to be the Patsy"