The Card and Wine-Rooms.
No drinks are served in the public parlors, public halls, or cosy-corners. The wine-rooms are usually kept in order by the parlor-maid. The bar-porter should come for the bottles and remove the dishes. The parlor-maid should sweep and dust the wine rooms and wipe the tables, if they are polished wood. If they are ordinary dining-room tables, she should put clean table-cloths on them twice a day. The wine-rooms are usually named for the cities: Chicago, New York, Binghamton, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Denver, and New Orleans.
The card-rooms are kept in order by the parlor-maid. There is seldom much furniture in a card-room, only chairs and tables. Sweeping and dusting once a day and a clean cover for the table is all that is required.
To make a muslin cover for a poker-table, take a piece of muslin and cut it round to fit the table, allowing six inches to hang down. Run a casing on the edge of it, with a bias piece two inches wide. Run in the casing, a drawing-string of common wrapping-twine. The drawing-string must be as long as the muslin is around so it will not have to be removed when laundered. After it is laundered, put it on the table and pull the drawing-string, and tie under the table.
In small hotels where the parlor-maid is called on to perform all of these manifold duties, she is assisted by the houseman.
About Chambermaids.
Some person that does not know anything about the life of a chambermaid will tell you that the "chambermaid has no protection, no morality, and is without the influence of a fixed place or home atmosphere;" finally, that "chamber-work is the most degrading occupation a girl can engage in!"
If a girl is not capable of a higher calling, why should not she make beds in a hotel when there is such a crying need from the hotel managers for conscientious and painstaking work? It is not every girl that Providence has blessed with a prima donna's voice. Not every girl can be admitted on the vaudeville stage. Not all have had kind and wealthy parents to send them through college and fit them for the higher attainments.