I hasten to add, however, that this situation, hopeless as it at times appears to be, brings forcibly to my mind that ancient chestnut set forth in the sign in the Far Western church—
DON'T SHOOT THE ORGANIST:
HE IS DOING THE BEST HE CAN—
for I verily believe that in nine cases out of ten the landlords of the nation are in point of fact doing the "best they can," and in many instances in the face of heart-breaking discouragement. They are themselves quite aware of their deficiencies, as was once clearly established in the inscription I saw in front of an Oklahoma caravansary as I passed through on the Katy-Flyer, to the following effect:
THE SALT AND TOOTHPICKS SERVED AT THE
SAINT JAMES ARE AS GOOD AS THOSE
AT ANY HOTEL IN AMERICA
Our American communities, unfortunately, have not yet awakened to the economic fact that a good hotel is about as valuable an asset as a town can have. An enterprise that might very properly, and for the general good, be subsidized by the Board of Trade, or even by the town itself, is left to private initiative; usually with barren, if not bankrupting, results.
New England is slowly awakening to this need, and within the last few years a number of fine hostelries have been established, with the backing of real civic interest, and under trained management; but very few of even the most progressive Western and Southern Communities seem as yet to have taken so vital a matter into consideration. They have good will and courtesy enough among them to run a thousand highly acceptable caravansaries, and I have sometimes wished that some of their individual qualities might in some way be engrafted upon our more sumptuous Eastern hotels, where one is able to get anything one is willing to pay for, except the feeling that somebody somewhere in the hotel is glad he came.
"If it were possible to sweep a room clean with a welcoming wave of the hand—"
I do not know how many thousand library buildings our great Ironmaster has caused to be built in this country—and we who write books have cause to be grateful to him for having provided such rarely beautiful mausoleums for the final interment of our cherished productions—but I have often wished that his generous pursestrings had been loosened on behalf of hospitality, rather than exclusively for the perpetuation of current fiction and books of reference that nobody ever uses. Before the trusts are finally curbed I hope that one or two more swollen fortunes may be produced, and that the owners thereof may be inspired to carry the light of living into communities in need of something of the sort, by building hotels for them, in which clean rooms suitably aired, and good food properly cooked, may be provided for those who have to travel, and are so constituted that they cannot eat poetry, nor sleep comfortably between the sheets of the lamented William James's incursions into pragmatic philosophy, dry as they unquestionably are.
How next to impossible it is for our good landlords in certain sections of the land to conduct their business profitably was once brought to my attention by a little incident in a town not many leagues from Atlanta, Georgia. I found myself seated one evening at table opposite a traveling man of most marvelous gastronomic fortitude. For his supper he ordered cereal and cream, two fried eggs "done on both sides," some bacon, "a little of that steak," German fried potatoes, some baked beans, a bit of kippered herring, milk toast, preserved peaches, hot biscuit, sponge cake, and a cup of coffee. After the commissariat had responded faithfully, and the table had been duly decorated with the serried ranks of "bird-bath" dishes containing the bulk of the enumerated edibles, a third party arrived, and an old friendship between himself and my vis-à-vis was renewed.