“If there was a railway running along all the passages and corridors we might manage to get round the Palace Hotel in a morning,” I said, “but steam has not yet been introduced for that purpose. To be sure, there is the pneumatic tube, but that is not quite large enough unless you are willing to go without a pannier.”
“How large is the house?” asked Mrs. Lawyer.
“Why, it is three hundred and fifty feet long by two hundred and seventy-five broad.”
“Let us hurry, then; if it is so huge we have no time to lose,” was the brave response.
“Well, here’s an elevator,” I remarked.
We stepped into one of the four passenger elevators, which are run by hydraulic power. The motion was almost imperceptible, and rapid as the downward flight of a swallow. The young gent in charge told us that it could run from bottom to top and back again to bottom, through the whole seven stories of the house, in ten seconds.
On arriving on the ground floor we first inspected the grand court and the rooms on either side, and then turned into one of the long corridors, from which my wife insisted upon visiting the handsome stores, opening off with their tempting wares. I left her making purchases while I entered the barber’s saloon, and in one of the easiest of patent adjustible chairs, by the deftest of tonsors, with the keenest of razors, allowed myself to be shaved; for Mrs. L. loved not to see a man with his nose projecting over a cascade of hair, and desired that my face might preserve its human outline, instead of presenting—as she sarcastically remarked—no distinction from the physiognomy of a bearded owl or a Barbary ape.
No fear of losing nose or cheek while in that place. But, after all, it is not a sublime attitude for a man to sit, with lathered chin, thrown backward, and have his nose made a handle of. To be shaved, however, is the fashion of American respectability, and it is astonishing how gravely men look at each other when they are all in the fashion. For the benefit of those unfortunates who get gashed betimes beneath the operator’s hand, I would say, that if a barber attempts to shave you he must possess the necessary education and skill, and show the diligence of an expert in that line, otherwise he will be liable for damages sustained.[256] Of course if you suffer an inexperienced volunteer to practice upon your chin and you come to grief, you have no remedy, unless the amateur is guilty of gross negligence; but if one unskilled in the art pushes himself forward and seizes you by the nasal projection, to the exclusion of a professional, he is expected to use the skill usually possessed by a master of the art.[257] In Illinois, it would seem that if one renders his services free, gratis, and for nothing, he will be only liable for gross negligence;[258] but the point appears open to argument.[259] I presume that no one would be so foolish as to suppose that a professor of the tonsorial art is bound to attend to your hirsute appendages willy-nilly; but when he does take you in hand he must carry the operation through without any sins of omission or commission.[260]
When I rejoined my wife, she asked to descend into the basement regions, so down we went, and found bath-rooms and laundry-rooms, wine-rooms, pantries, etc., in well nigh endless succession.
“How many napkins do you use a day?” inquired Mrs. L. of the individual whose duty it was to reside in a region of perpetual steam and damp.