For a surprise we came upon Geneva, a perfect little Quaker, sitting on her own garden lawn at the edge of the road leading west. Facing an old Puritan church across a square of green, stood a row of little houses that suggested the setting of a play like “Pomander Walk.” To the moneyed magnates of the mansions of the lower Hudson, to the retired tradesmen residing in some of the red and brown residences of the various Genesee avenues, the demure little square of huddled houses of Geneva might seem contemptibly mean. Yet the mansions left us cold, while the little houses indescribably warmed our hearts. It was like the unexpected finding of a bit of fragile and beautiful old porcelain in a brickyard. We expected to see the counterpart of one of the heroines of Miss Austen’s novels come out of one of the quaint little doorways.
We would have liked to find a tea shop on the square, for it was lunch time and we hated having to turn into Main Street and make our choice between several unprepossessing hotels. Geneva was certainly a town of unexpected contrasts. Although the little houses around the corner were so adorable, the Hotel Seneca from its façade of factory brick, sitting flat on the street, never for a moment warned us of an interior looking exactly like the illustrations in Vogue! White woodwork, French blue cut velvet, delicate spindly Adam furniture, a dining-room all white with little square-paned mirror doors, too attractive! Luncheon was delicious and well served by waitresses in white dresses, crisp and clean.
Our great surprise has been the excellence of the roads and the hotels, and our really beautiful and prosperous country. Going through these miles after miles of perfect vineyards and orchards, these wonderfully kept farms, it seems impossible to believe that in New York City are long bread lines, and that in other parts of our great country there is strife, hunger, poverty and waste.
In Buffalo we stopped at the Statler, a commercial hotel with a much advertised and really quite faultless service that carries the idea of personal attention to guests to its highest degree. When you register, the clerk reads your name and invariably thereafter everyone calls you by it. In fact they did even more than that. I had wired ahead for rooms and as soon as I went up to register, the clerk, whose own name was printed and hung over the desk, said: “Your room is No. 355, Mrs. Post!” I had no idea where Room 355 was, but I felt as though I must have occupied it often before—as though in fact it in some personal way belonged to me. A decidedly pleasant contrast to a certain New York hotel where, after stopping four months under its roof, the clerks asked a guest her name!
The Buffalo hotel publishes a little pamphlet called the “Statler Service Codes.” It contains advice to employees, an explanation of what is meant by good service, a talk about tipping and a talk to patrons. A few of its sayings, copied at random, are:
“At rare intervals some perverse member of our force disagrees with a guest. He maintains that this sauce was ordered when the guest says the other. Or that the boy did go up to the room. Or that it was a room reserved and not dinner for six. Either may be right. But no employee of this hotel is allowed the privilege of arguing any point with a guest.”
“A door man can swing the door in a manner to assure the guest that he is in His Hotel, or he can sling it in a way that sticks in the guest’s crop and makes him expect to find at the desk a sputtery pen sticking in a potato.”
After giving every thought to the guest’s comfort, the end of the little book also asks fairness on the part of the guests. Such as, not to say you waited fifteen minutes when you waited barely five; or not to object if the clerks can’t read your signature if you write in hieroglyphics.
In the morning at the Statler, a newspaper is pushed under your door and on it is a printed slip saying: “Good morning! This is your paper while you are in Buffalo.” And when you are ready to leave instead of calling, “Front! Get 355’s baggage!” the Statler clerk says, “Go up to Mrs. Post’s room and bring down her things!”
I certainly liked it very much. And I am sure other people must feel the same.