A fashionable young gent—a dweller in the city—(on whose face nature, as in the case of the Honorable Percy Popjoy, had burst out with a chin-tuft, but, exhausted with the effort, had left the rest of the countenance smooth as an infant’s cheek) had been enjoying himself with some kindred spirits, (and some spirits far stronger, too,) and being belated, as well as rather bewildered, with the potations of the evening, went to bed in our hotel. The next morning he found himself the possessor of a splitting headache, but minus his gold repeater; so he kindly and condescendingly consulted me upon the subject of the proprietor’s liability to make good his loss.
I told him that in my opinion he had better save up his money and buy a new watch, for there were several reasons why the hotel-keeper need not give him one.
“What are they?” he asked.
“We need not consider,” I replied, “the question of your negligence in carelessly exhibiting your watch among a lot of people at the bar, nor in leaving your door unlocked, nor need we say that because your intoxication contributed to the loss, therefore the landlord is not liable.[119] The fact that you were not a traveler is sufficient to prevent your recovering. Long since it was laid down in old Bacon that inns are for passengers and wayfaring men, so that a friend or a neighbor can have no action as a guest against the landlord.”[120]
“What in thunder have I to do with what is laid down in old Bacon?”
“What is to be found inside old Bacon, and old calf, and old sheep, has a good deal to do with every one who makes an old pig of himself,” I testily replied.
“I trust, sir, that you use that last epithet in its Pickwickian sense,” said the young exquisite.
“Certainly, certainly,” I hastened to reply, “if you will so accept it.”
“Then I would ask,” continued my interrogator, “must a man be a certain length of time at an hotel before he is entitled to the privileges of a guest?”
“Oh, dear, no! Merely purchasing temporary refreshment at an inn makes the purchaser a guest and renders the innkeeper liable for the safety of the goods he may have with him,[121] if he is a traveler.”