"Oh," said he, bringing his hand down heavily on the bell. "Front, show this gentleman to number three hundred and nine."
He tossed a key to the bellboy, which the latter caught with the dexterity of a Buck Ewing, the prize catcher in the ball games of my young manhood, and holding my diminished head as high as I could I followed him to the elevator, devoutly wishing that Riley or Ade might happen in and fall upon my neck, and show that low-browed room clerk a thing or two he wouldn't forget in a hurry.
And then came a sort of amende honorable. Scarcely had I got settled in number three hundred and nine when a second bellboy arrived, bearing a note addressed to "Mr. John Henry Banks," neatly typewritten, and reading as follows:
Dear Sir,—If you wish a table for the display of your samples and a plug key for the protection of the same, please apply at the office.
Respectfully, The Claypool.
It was a salutary experience, and in my subsequent visits to the Athens of America I have approached it in an appropriate spirit of humility and respect. And philosophically I have tried to comfort myself with the thought that after all it would not be very surprising if a scuttleful of coal arriving at Newcastle were to find its coming a matter of small importance to those good people who dig that useful commodity out of the bowels of the earth at the rate of ten carloads a minute. Why should a mere writer of books arriving at Indianapolis expect to create any special commotion, when it is a well known fact that you could not possibly heave a brick in any direction in that charming city without hitting an author?
I think that for sheer originality in his craft, as well as for his human interest, I must award the palm among innkeepers I have met to a vigorous old fellow who either ran, or was run by, a hotel I once visited in South Dakota. He was known to most people as "Conk": not because of the rather hard shell one had to penetrate to get at him, but because it was the first syllable of his last name.
His hotel was a two-story brick structure, sadly in need of a Noachian Deluge for its preliminary renovation, and built upon the pleasing lines of an infant penitentiary. This illusion was faithfully carried out by the rooms within, which had many of the physical qualities of the cells of commerce. The hotel had a dining room; but Conk had given up serving meals therein, and had also as far as I could observe abandoned everything else in the way of service as well.
My Muse and I arrived several hours before dawn, and after wandering hand in hand for twenty or thirty minutes along invisible highways reached the edifice. We registered, and were ushered to a pigeonhole on the second tier by a large, yellow-haired youth, who was trying to keep awake and mop up the office floor simultaneously, succeeding only indifferently in both operations. The particular cell set apart for our accommodation was lit by a half-candlepower bulb with a pronounced flicker, which shed a dim, religious light upon a walled-in space about ten feet square. In this there was a double bed, a nondescript piece of furniture which suggested a collision between a washstand and a bureau, a rocking chair that refused to rock, and a cane-bottomed arrangement of perilous spindles that wouldn't do anything else. After I had disposed of our two suitcases and my typewriting machine the only solution of another difficulty that immediately arose was to leave our feet out in the hall.
As soon as I noted the rather limited character of our accommodations I repaired below, to see if there was not available something a trifle more roomy: to find only the satisfaction involved in the contemplation of the tow-headed six-footer lying asleep on a bench exchanging dreamy nothings with his mop, which he held hugged tight to his breast. With persistent effort I might have awakened the mop; but the tow-headed youth was too far gone into the land of dreams to be recalled by anything short of a universal cataclysm. I therefore crept sadly up the stairs to our cell, and we reclined on the double bed until dawn, at which time the merciful providence of the half-candlepower bulb was completely revealed unto us; for if we had been able to see that bed in its dim light no power on earth, not all the mobilized armies of the world could have induced us to lie down upon it.