A wild shriek of the locomotive, announcing that we were drawing near our destination, and the necessary preparations consequent upon such arrival, prevented us listening further to this conversation. I remarked to my wife that if I had never known of evil spirits being laid by the efflux of saliva, I had at least heard of their being raised thereby, and instanced Shylock and Signor Antonio.
We drove up to the “Occidental House” in the bus belonging to that famous establishment. The satchel of a fellow-traveler was lost off the top of the carriage. I endeavored to console him with the information that years ago, where the keeper of a public house gave notice that he would furnish a free conveyance to and from the cars to all passengers, with their baggage, and for that purpose employed the owner of certain carriages to take passengers and their baggage, free of charge, to his house, and a traveler, who knew of this arrangement, drove in one of these cabs to the hotel, and on the way there had his trunk lost or stolen through the want of skill or care of the driver, the innkeeper was held liable to make good the loss. The court that decided the point held that it was immaterial whether he was responsible as a common carrier or as an innkeeper, as in either case the consideration for the undertaking was the profit to be derived from the entertainment of the traveler as a guest, and that an implied promise to take care of the baggage was founded on such consideration.[48]
My fellow-traveler seemed not a little pleased with my information, and expressed his intention of seeking an early interview with the landlord of the “Occidental” on the subject of the lost satchel.
While in the bus, a man who appeared to be an agent for a rival house made some very disparaging remarks with regard to the “Occidental,” with more vehemence than elegance or truthfulness, evidently with the design of inducing some intending guests to change their minds and go elsewhere. It was well for him that none of the “Occidental” people heard him, for if they had he might speedily have become the defendant in an action at law, for misstatements like his are actionable.[49]
What a contrast between the palatial mansion at which we now alighted, and the hovel which the previous night had covered our heads—(protection it had not afforded). The small and dirty entrance of the one was exchanged for a spacious and lofty hall in the other, paved with marble and fitted up with comfortable sofas and cushions, on which was lounging and smoking, talking and reading, a multifarious lot of humanity; the parlor, with its yellow paint and rag carpet, was replaced by large, well lighted and elegantly furnished drawing-rooms, with carpets so soft that a footstep was no more heard than a passing shadow, and gorgeous mirrors reflecting the smiles, faces and elaborately artistic toilets of city belles, and the trim figures and prim moustaches of youthful swells; a pretty little room, yclept an elevator, neatly carpeted, well lighted, free from noxious scents, with comfortable seats and handsome reflectors, led up on high, instead of the groaning, creaking stairs of the country inn. The bedrooms, with their spotless linen, luxurious beds, dainty carpets, and cosy chairs, rested and refreshed one’s weary bones by their very appearance. The noble dining-hall, with its delicately tinted walls, its pillars and gilded roof, with neatly dressed waiters, and the master of ceremonies patrolling the room seeing to the comfort of the guests, the arrangements of their places, and that each servant did his duty, gave a zest to one’s appetite which the tempting viands increased a hundred fold, and the soups, fish, relèves, entrées, game, relishes, vegetables, pastry, and dessert of the menu differed from the bill of fare of the previous day as does light from darkness, sweet from bitter.
As we were ascending in the luxuriously furnished, brilliantly lighted and gently moving elevator, a ninnyhammer tried to get on after the conductor had started. In doing so he well nigh severed the connection between his ill-stored head and well-fed body. I told him that his conduct was most foolhardy, for if he had been injured he could have recovered nothing from the hotel proprietor, for the accident would have been directly traceable to his own stupid want of ordinary care and prudence.[50]
At the dinner table we found that many of the people, notwithstanding the luxurious surroundings, seemed quite oblivious of the sage advice given by Mistress Hannah Woolley, of London, in the year of grace 1673. That worthy says in her “Gentlewoman’s Companion”: “Do not eat spoon-meat so hot that tears stand in your eyes, or that thereby you betray your intolerable greediness. Do not bite your bread, but cut or break it; and keep not your knife always in your hand, for that is as unseemly as a gentlewoman who pretended to have as little a stomach as she had mouth, and therefore would not swallow her peas by spoonfuls, but took them one by one and cut them in two before she would eat them. Fill not your mouth so full that your cheeks shall swell like a pair of Scotch bag-pipes.”
One of the company near by ate as if he had never eaten in any place save a shanty all the days of his life; he was not quite so bad, however, as the celebrated Dr. Johnson, who, Lord Macaulay tells us, “tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling in his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks;” but yet, in dispatching his food, he swallowed two-thirds of his knife at every mouthful with the coolness of a juggler.
“Such a savage as that ought not to be permitted to take his meals in the dining-room,” said my wife.
“I am not sure that he could be prevented on account of his style of eating,” I replied, as the man began shoveling peas with a knife into his mouth, which could not have been broader unless Dame Nature had placed his auricular appendages an inch or two further back. (By the way, how did they eat peas before the days of knives, forks, and spoons?)