THE
LAW OF HOTEL LIFE

OR THE

BY
R. VASHON ROGERS Jr.
Of Osgoode Hall, Barrister-at-Law
SAN FRANCISCO:
SUMNER WHITNEY AND COMPANY.
BOSTON: HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge.
1879.

Copyright 1879,
By Sumner Whitney & Co.

The author knows as well as did old Burton that "books are so plentiful that they serve to put under pies, to lap spice in, and keep roast meat from burning," yet he ventures to offer another volume to the public, trusting that some men’s fancies will incline towards and approve of it; for "writings are so many dishes, readers guests, books like beauty—that which one admires another rejects." He thinks he can say, in the words of Democritus Junior, that "as a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth, a bee gathers wax and honey out of many flowers, and makes a new bundle of all, I have laboriously collected this cento out of divers authors, and that sine injuria. I cite and quote mine authors."

This volume was written at the suggestion of the Publishers, as a companion to "The Wrongs and Rights of a Traveller," and is now committed to the tender mercies of general readers, and to the microscopic eyes of the critics who know everything. Doubtless mistakes will be found; but if every one knew the law who thinks he does, lawyers would starve.

R. V. R. Jr.

Kingston, Ont., March, 1879.

Chapter I.
A COMMON INN AND INNKEEPER.

The last kiss was given—the last embrace over—and, amid a storm of hurrahs and laughter and a hailstorm of old slippers and uncooked rice, we dashed away from my two-hours’ bride’s father’s country mansion in the new family carriage, on our wedding tour. The programme was that we were to stay at the little village of Blank that night, and on the morrow we expected to reach the city of Noname, where we would be able to find conveyances more in accord with the requirements of the last quarter of the nineteenth century of grace than a carriage and pair.

Arm in arm and hand in hand we sat during the long, bright June afternoon, as the prancing grays hurried us along the country roads—now beside grassy meads, now beneath o’erhanging forest trees, then up hill, next down dale, while little squirrels raced along beside us on the fence tops, or little streamlets dashed along near by, bubbling, foaming, roaring and sparkling in the sheen of the merry sunshine, and the broad fans of insect angels gently waved over their golden disks as they floated past; all nature, animate and inanimate, smiling merrily upon us, as if quite conscious who and what we were. But little did we note the beauties of sky or field, cot or hamlet, bird or flower, for was it not our first drive since the mystic word of the white-robed minister of the Church had made of us twain one flesh? The beauties of the other’s face and disposition absorbed the contemplation of each of us. Once or twice, indeed, I felt inclined to make a remark or two anent the fields we passed; but remembering that I knew not a carrot from a parsnip, until it was cooked, or wheat from oats, except in the well-known forms of bread and porridge, and not wishing to be like Lord Erskine, who, on coming to a finely cultivated field of wheat, called it “a beautiful piece of lavender,” I refrained.

Love in itself is very good,
But ’tis by no means solid food;
And ere our first day’s drive was o’er,
I found we wanted something more.

So when at last, as the shadows began to lengthen and still evening drew on, we espied in the valley beneath us the village in which was our intended resting place, I exclaimed:

“Ah! there’s our inn at last!”

“At last! so soon wearied of my company!” chid my bride, in gentle tones. “But why do people talk of a village ‘inn’ and a city ‘hotel’? What is the difference between a hotel and an inn?”

“There is no real difference,” I replied, glad to have the subject changed from the one Mrs. Lawyer had first started. “The distinction is but one of name, for a hotel is but a common inn on a grander scale.[1] Inn, tavern, and hotel are synonymous terms.”[2]

“What do the words really mean?”

“Have you forgotten all your French? The word ‘hotel’ is derived from the French hôtel, (for hostel,) and originally meant a palace, or residence for lords and great personages, and has, on that account no doubt, been retained to distinguish the more respectable houses of entertainment.”

“Well, what is the derivation of ‘inn’?” queried my wife.

“I was just going to say that that is rather obscure, but is probably akin to a Chaldaic word meaning ‘to pitch a tent,’ and is applicable to all houses of entertainment.[3] Inns there were in the far distant East thirty-five centuries and more before you appeared to grace this mundane sphere;[4] although, when the patriarch Jacob went to visit his pretty cousins, he was not fortunate enough to find one, and had to make his bed on the ground, taking a stone for his pillow.”

“And very famous in after years did that just mentioned pillow become,” said Mrs. L., interruptingly. “And much pain and grief, as well as glory and renown, has it brought to those who have used it.”

“What meanest thou?” in my turn queried I.

“Don’t you know that upon that stone the sovereigns of England have been crowned ever since the first Edward stole it from the Scots, who had taken it from the Irish, who doubtless had come honestly by it, and that it now forms one of the wonders and glories of Westminster Abbey?”

“Indeed!” I remarked, with an inflection in my voice signifying doubt.

“I wonder who kept the first hotel, and what it was like,” quoth my lady.

“History is silent on both points,” I replied. “But doubtless the early ones were little more than sheds beside a spring or well, where the temporary lodger, worn and dirty, could draw forth his ham sandwich from an antediluvian carpet-bag, eat it at his leisure, wash it down with pure water, curl himself up in a corner, and, undisturbed by the thought of having to rise before daylight to catch the express, sleep—while the other denizens of the cabin took their evening meal at his expense.”

“But no one could make much out of such a place,” urged Mrs. Lawyer.

“Quite correct. Boniface, in those days, contented himself with an iron coin, a piece of leather stamped with the image of a cow, or some such primitive representative of the circulating medium.”

“Times are changed since then,” remarked my companion.

“What else could you expect? Are you a total disbeliever in the Darwinian theory of development? Inns and hotels, in their history, are excellent examples of the truth of that hypothesis. Protoplasm maturing into perfect humanity is as nothing to them. See how, through many gradations, the primeval well has become the well-stocked bar-room of to-day; the antique hovel is now the luxurious Windsor, the resplendent Palace, the Grand Hôtel du Louvre; the uncouth barbarian, who showed to each comer his own proper corner to lie in, has blossomed into the smiling and gentlemanly proprietor or clerk, who greets you as a man and a brother; the simple charge of a piece of iron or brass for bed and board (then synonymous) has grown into an elaborate bill, which requires ducats, or sovereigns, or eagles to liquidate. But further discussion on this interesting question must be deferred to some future day, for here we are,” I added, as we halted at “The Farmer’s Home.”

“I don’t believe that Joseph’s brethren ever stopped at a more miserable looking caravansary,” said my wife, in tones in which contentment was not greatly marked. “Are you quite sure that this is the inn? It has no sign.”

“That fact is of no moment,” I hastened to reply. “A sign is not an essential, although it is evidence of an inn. Every one who makes it his business to entertain travelers, and provide lodgings and necessaries for them, their attendants, and horses, is a common innkeeper, whether a sign swings before the door, or no.”[5]

“And a common enough innkeeper he looks, in all conscience,” said Mrs. Lawyer, as mine host of the signless inn appeared upon the stoop to receive his guests. Coatless he was, waistcoat he had none; the rim of his hat glistened brightly in the declining sun, as if generations of snails had made it their favorite promenade; his legs, or the legs of his pantaloons, were not pairs—they differed so much in length; his boots knew not the glories of Day & Martin; his face had hydrophobia, so long was it since it had touched water; and “wildly tossed from cheek to chin the tumbling cataract of his beard.”

With the grace of a bear and the ease of a bull in a china-shop, he ushered us into the parlor, with its yellow floor, its central square of rag-carpet, its rickety table, its antique sampler and gorgeous pictures on the walls, its festoons of colored paper depending from the ceiling, its flies buzzing on the window-panes. Sad were the glances we exchanged when for a minute we were left in this elegant boudoir.

“What a nuisance that the other inn was burnt down last week, and that there is none but this miserable apology for one within thirty miles,” I growled.

“’Tis but for a night,” returned my wife, in consolatory tones. “It is only what we might have expected, for saith not the poet:

‘Inns are nasty, dusty, fusty,
Both with smoke and rubbish musty’?”

Soon we mounted the groaning stairs to our dormitory, and found the house to be a veritable

“Kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And bedrooms dirty, bare, and small.”

The room assigned to us might have been smaller, the furniture might have been cheaper and older—possibly; but to have conceived my blooming bride in a more unsuitable place—impossible. I asked for better accommodation; Boniface shook his head solemnly, (I thought I heard his few brains rattle in his great stupid skull) and muttered that it was the best he had, and if we did not like it we might leave and look elsewhere.

“We must make the best of it, my dear. The landlord is only bound to provide reasonable and proper accommodation, even if there were better in the house; he need not give his guests the precise rooms they may select.”[6]

We resolved to display the Christian grace of resignation.

As speedily as possible we arranged our toilets and descended once more to the lower regions, with the faint hope that the dining-room might be better furnished with the good things of this life than either the parlor or bed-room. Sad to relate, the fates were still against us: we found, on entering the salle à manger, a couple of small tables put together in the middle of the room, covered with three or four cloths of different ages and dates of washing, and arranged as much like one as the circumstances of the case would allow. Upon these were laid knives and forks; some of the knife-handles were green, others red, and a few yellow, and as all the forks were black, the combination of colors was exceedingly striking. Soon the rest of the paraphernalia and the comestibles appeared, and then Josh Billings’ description became strictly applicable; “Tea tew kold tew melt butter; fride potatoze which resembled the chips a tew-inch augur makes in its journey thru an oke log; bread solid; biefstake about az thick as blister plaster, and az tough as a hound’s ear; table kovered with plates; a few scared-tew-death pickles on one of them, and 6 fly-indorsed crackers on another; a pewterunktoon kaster, with 3 bottles in it—one without any mustard, and one with tew inches of drowned flies and vinegar in it.”

Fortunately, long abstinence came to our aid, and hunger, which covers a multitude of sins in cookery and “dishing up,” was present, and our manducatory powers were good; so we managed to supply the cravings of the inner man to some extent.

“What is this?” I asked of the landlord, as he handed me a most suspicious looking fluid.

“It’s bean soup,” he gruffly replied.

“Never mind what it’s been—what is it now?” I asked a second time. A smile from my wife revealed to me my error, and I saved the astonished man the necessity of a reply.

At the table we were joined by an acquaintance, who informed me that he had great difficulty in obtaining admission to the house, as the innkeeper had a grudge against him.

“No matter what personal objection a host may have, he cannot refuse to receive a guest. Every one who opens an inn by the wayside, and professes to exercise the business and employment of a common innkeeper, is bound to afford such shelter and accommodation as he possesses to all travelers who apply therefor, and tender, or are able to pay, the customary charges,”[7] I remarked.

“But surely one is not bound to take the trouble to make an actual tender?” questioned my friend.

“I am not quite so sure on that point,” I replied. “Coleridge, J., once said that it is the custom so universal with innkeepers to trust that a person will pay before he leaves the inn, that it cannot be necessary for a guest to tender money before he enters.[8] But, in a subsequent case, Lord Abinger said that he could not agree with Coleridge’s opinion,[9] and three other judges concurred with Abinger, although the court was not called upon to decide the matter. In fact, the point has never been definitely settled in England. Text-writers, however, think an offer to pay requisite,[10] and it has been so held in Canada.”[11]

“But what,” said my friend, “if the proprietor is rude enough to slam the door in your face, and you cannot see even an open window?”

“Oh, in that case even Abinger would dispense with a tender.”[12]

“It seems hard that a man must admit every one into his house, whether he wishes or no,” said my wife.

“Reflect, my dear,” I replied, “that if an innkeeper was allowed to choose his guests and receive only those whom he saw fit, unfortunate travelers, although able and willing to pay for entertainment, might be compelled, through the mere caprice of the innkeeper, to wander about without shelter, exposed to the heats of summer, the rains of autumn, the snows of winter, or the winds of spring.”

“Do you mean to say that improper persons must be received?”

“Oh dear no! A traveler who behaves in a disorderly or improper manner may be refused admission,[13] and so may one who has a contagious disease, or is drunk.[14] And, of course, if there is no room, admission may be refused.[15] But it will not do for the publican to say that he has no room, if such statement be false; for that venerable authority, Rolle, says: ‘Si un hôtelier refuse un guest sur pretense que son maison est pleine de guests, si est soit faux, action sur le case git.’”[16]

“You don’t say so!” said my friend, aghast at the jargon. I continued:

“And a publican must not knowingly allow thieves, or reputed thieves, to meet in his house, however lawful or laudable their object may be.”[17]

“Suppose they wanted to hold a prayer-meeting, what then?” asked my wife.

“I cannot say how that would be; but a friendly meeting for collection of funds was objected to. Nor should he allow a policeman, while on duty, to remain on his premises, except in the execution of that duty.[18] And he may prohibit the entry of one whose misconduct or filthy condition would subject his guests to annoyance.[19] And I remember reading that Mrs. Woodhull and Miss Claflin were turned away from a New York hotel on the ground of their want of character.”

“What if the poor hotel-keeper is sick?” inquired Mrs. Lawyer.

“Neither illness, nor insanity, nor lunacy, nor idiocy, nor hypochondriacism, nor hypochondriasis, nor vapors, nor absence, nor intended absence, can avail the landlord as an excuse for refusing admission.[20] Although the illness or desertion of his servants, if he has not been able to replace them, might be an excuse; and perchance his own infancy, and perchance not.”[21]

“What can you do if he refuses to let you in?” asked my friend. “Break open the door?”

“No, that might lead to a breach of the peace. You may either sue him for damages, or have him indicted and fined; and it is also said in England that the constable of the town, if his assistance is invoked, may force the recalcitrant publican to receive and entertain the guest.[22] If you sue him you will have to prove that he kept a common inn;[23] that you are a traveler,[24] and came to the inn and demanded to be received and lodged as a guest; that he had sufficient accommodation,[25] and refused to take you in, although you were in a fit and proper state to be received,[26] and offered to pay a reasonable sum for accommodation.”

“In most hotels they keep a register in which one is expected to inscribe his cognomen by means of a pen of the most villainous description; must one give his name, or may he travel incog. and without exhibiting his cacography?”

“An innkeeper has no right to pry into a guest’s affairs, and insist upon knowing his name and address,”[27] I replied.

“Talking about registers,” began my friend Jones, but in tones so low that what he said must go in the foot notes.[28]

“Last summer,” continued talkative Jones, “I tried to get quarters late one Saturday night at a village inn, but the proprietor refused to admit me; and a venerable female put her head out of the window, like Sisera’s mother, and told me that they were all in bed, and that they could not take in those who profaned the Sabbath day.”

“You might have sued for damages,” I said, “for the innkeeper being cosily settled in his bed for the night, or it being Sunday, makes no difference in a traveler’s rights;[29] at least where, as in England, it is not illegal to travel on that sacred day.”

“I think you said that one must be a traveler before one could claim the rights of a guest—is that an essential?”

“Yes, a sine qua non. Bacon says: ‘Inns are for passengers and wayfaring men, so that a friend or a neighbor shall have no action as a guest’[30] (unless, indeed, the neighbor be on his travels[31]). The Latin word for an inn is, as of course you know, diversorium, because he who lodges there is quasi divertens se a via.”[32]

“What wretched food!” said my wife, as she helped herself to a biscuit. “’Tis enough to poison one.”

“It is by no means a feast of delicacies—the brains of singing birds, the roe of mullets, or the sunny halves of peaches,” returned our friend.

“Well, my dear,” I replied, “a publican selling unwholesome drink or victuals may be indicted for a misdemeanor at common law; and the unhappy recipient of his noxious mixtures may maintain an action for the injury done;[33] and this is so even if a servant provides the goods without the master’s express directions.”[34]

* * * * * *

A stroll through the village, and a little moralizing beside the scarcely cold embers of the rival inn, where

“Imagination fondly stooped to trace
The parlor splendors of that festive place,
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnish’d clock that clicked behind the door,”

passed the time until Darkness spread her sable robe over all the earth. We sat outside our inn in the fresh air, and listened while the myriad creatures which seem born on every summer night uplifted in joy their stridulous voices, piping the whole chromatic scale with infinite self-satisfaction. Innumerable crickets sent forth what, perhaps, were gratulations on our arrival; a colony of tree-toads asked, in the key of C sharp major, after their relatives in the back country; while the swell bass of the bull-frogs seemed to be, with deep and hearty utterances, thanking heaven that their dwelling-places were beside pastures green in cooling streams. For a while we listened to this concert of liliputians rising higher and higher as Nature hushed to sleep her children of a larger growth. Ere long, the village bell tolled the hour for retiring. I told the landlady to call us betimes, and then my wife and self shut ourselves up in our little room for the night.

Very weariness induced the partner of my joys and sorrows to commit her tender frame to the coarse bedclothes; but before “tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep” arrived, and with repose our eyelids closed, an entomological hunt began. First a host of little black bandits found us out, and attacked us right vigorously, skirmishing bravely and as systematically as if they had been trained in the schools of that educator of fleas, Signor Bertolotto, only his students always crawl carefully along and never hop, as we found by experience that our fierce assailants did. After we had disposed of these light cavalry—these F sharps—for a time, and were again endeavoring to compose our minds to sleep, there came a detachment of the B-flat brigade, of aldermanic proportions, pressing slowly on. Again there was a search as for hidden treasures. Faugh! what a time we had, pursuing and capturing, crushing and decapitating, hosts of creatures not to be named in ears polite. Most hideous night, thou wert not sent for slumber! It would almost have been better for us had we been inmates of the hospital for such creatures at Surat, for there we would have been paid for the feast we furnished. Here we had the prospect of paying for our pains and pangs.

I am an ardent entomologist; but I solemnly avow I grew tired that night of my favorite science. ’Twas vain to think of slumber—

Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

nor yet the plan adopted by the Samoan islanders, who place a snake, imprisoned in bamboo, beneath their heads and find the hissing of the reptile highly soporific, could medicine us to that sweet sleep which nature so much needed. At length we arose in despair, donned our apparel, and sat down beside the window to watch for the first bright tints heralding the advent of the glorious king of day.

“Must we pay for such wretched accommodation?” asked my wife, mournfully. I shook my head as I replied:

“I fear me so.[35] We might escape;[36] but I don’t want to have a row about my bill in a dollar house.”

As soon as morning broke we began our preparations for an early departure from the purgatory in which we had passed the night. When we had descended, and had summoned the lady of the house to settle with her, my wife spoke strongly about the other occupants of our bed.

The woman hotly exclaimed, “You are mistaken, marm; I am sure there is not a single flea in the whole house!”

“A single flea!” retorted my wife, with withering scorn; “a single flea! I should think not; for I am sure that they are all married, and have large families, too.”

“Yes,” I added,

‘The little fleas have lesser fleas
Upon their backs to bite ’em;
The lesser fleas have other fleas,
And so ad infinitum.’”

Chapter II.
CITY HOUSE AND MANNERS.

The next evening, as Mrs. Lawyer and this present writer were rattling along at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour in the tail of the iron horse, my bride, imagining that she would like to know somewhat of the law, which had been my mistress for many years, and the ennui of the honeymoon having already commenced, asked me what was the legal definition of an inn.

I replied: “The definitions of an inn, like those of lovely woman, are very numerous: but perhaps the most concise is that given by old Petersdorff, who says it is ‘a house for the reception and entertainment of all comers for gain.’[37] Judge Bayley defined it to be a house where the traveler is furnished with everything he has occasion for while on the way.”[38]

“I should dearly love to stop at such an inn,” broke in my wife. “The worthy host would find my wants neither few nor small.”

“Oh, of course, the everything is to be taken not only cum grano salis but with a whole cellar full of that condiment. For instance, the landlord is not bound to provide clothes or wearing apparel for his guest.[39] But to proceed with our subject. Best, J., tried his hand—a good one, too—at definition-making, and declared an inn or hotel to be a house, the owner of which holds out that he will receive all travelers and sojourners who are willing to pay a price adequate to the sort of accommodation provided, and who come in a state in which they are fit to be received.[40] Another judge says it is a public house of entertainment for all who choose to visit it as guests without any previous agreement as to the time of their stay or the terms of payment.[41] The judges have, also, got off definitions of the word ‘innkeeper.’ It has been said that every one who makes it his business to entertain travelers and passengers and provide lodging and necessaries for them and their horses and attendants, is a common innkeeper.[42] But Bacon, very wisely and prudently, adds to this description the important words ‘for a reasonable compensation.’[43] One who entertains travelers for payment only occasionally, or takes in persons under an express contract, and shuts his doors upon those whom he chooses, is not an innkeeper, nor is he liable as such.[44] Stables are not necessary to constitute an inn;[45] nor is it essential that the meals should be served at table d’hôte.[46] A house for the reception and entertainment principally of emigrants arriving at a seaport and usually remaining but a short time, is yet an inn.”[47]

Here I stopped because I had nothing more to say; but seeing that my wife was gazing out of the window in a most inattentive manner, yet not wishing her to think that my fund of knowledge was exhausted, I added: “But a truce to this style of conversation. Remember that we are a newly married couple, and are not expected to talk so rationally.”

A pause ensued, during which, with great amusement and no little surprise at the facts and doctrines enunciated, we listened to the following dialogue between two rosy-cheeked Englishmen sitting in the seat behind us:

First Briton (loquitur).—“How disgusting it is to see those vile spittoons in hotels, in private houses, in churches—everywhere; and notwithstanding that their name is legion, the essence of nicotine is to be seen on all sides, dyeing the floors, the walls, the furniture.”

Second Briton.—“I have sometimes doubted whether the Americans expectorate to obtain good luck, or whether it is that they have such good fortune ever attending upon their designs and plans because they expectorate so much.”

First B. (rather dazed).—“I don’t understand you.”

Second B. (in tones of surprise at the other’s want of comprehension).—“Don’t you know that many Englishmen spit if they meet a white horse, or a squinting man, or a magpie, or if, inadvertently, they step under a ladder, or wash their hands in the same basin as a friend? In Lancashire, boys spit over their fingers before beginning to fight, and travelers do the same on a stone when leaving home, and then throw it away, and market people do it on the first money they receive.”

First B. (interrogatively).—“But, if these dirty people do indulge in this unseemly habit, what then?”

Second B.—“Why, they consider it a charm that will bring good luck, or avert evil. Swedish peasants expectorate thrice if they cross water after dark. The old Athenians used to spit if they passed a madman. The savage New Zealand priest wets two sticks with his saliva when he strives to divine the result of a coming battle.”

First B.—“But the why and the wherefore of all this expectoration?”

Second B.—“Because the mouth was once considered the only portal by which evil spirits could enter into a man, and by which alone they could be forced to make their exit; and the idea was to drive the fiends out with the saliva. The Mussulmans made spitting and nose-blowing a part of their religious ceremonies, for they hoped thereby to free themselves from the demons which they believed filled the air; and a Kamtschatkan priest, after he has sprinkled with holy water the babe brought to the baptismal font, spits solemnly to north and south, to east and west.”

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?)

“Do you mean to say that if an individual makes himself so extremely disagreeable to all other guests, the proprietor has no right to ask him to leave?” queried Mrs. L.

“Well, my dear, it was held in Pennsylvania that the host might request such an one to depart; and that if he did not, the hotel-keeper might lay his hands gently upon him and lead him out, and if resistance was made might use sufficient force to accomplish the desired end.”[51]

“Then please tell that waiter to take that man out,” broke in my wife.

“Not so fast, my dear; that decision was reversed afterward, and it was said to be assault and battery so to eject a guest.[52] I have known $600 damages given to a guest for an assault on him by his landlord.[53] I remember, too, a case where a man rejoicing in the trisyllabic name of Prendergast was coming from Madras to London round the Cape of Storms, having paid his fare as a cabin passenger. His habit was to reach across others at table to help himself, and to take potatoes and broiled bones in his fingers, devouring them as was the fashion in the days when Adam delved and Eve span, if they had such things then. The captain, offended at this ungentlemanly conduct, refused to treat Master P. as a first-class passenger, excluded him from the cabin, and would not allow him to walk on the weather side of the ship. On reaching England, Prendergast sued the captain for the breach of his agreement to carry him as a cuddy passenger; the officer pleaded that the conduct of the man had been vulgar, offensive, indecorous and unbecoming, but the son of Neptune was mulcted in damages to the tune of £25, Chief Justice Tindal observing that it would be difficult to say what degree of want of polish would, in point of law, warrant a captain in excluding one from the cuddy. Conduct unbecoming a gentleman in the strict sense of the word might possibly justify him, but in this case there was no imputation of the want of gentlemanly principles.[54] But here, at last, comes our dinner; let us show our neighbors how to handle knife and fork aright.”

And a very good dinner it was, too, although dished by a cook who had not the talents of the ancient knights of the kitchen who could dexterously serve up a sucking-pig boiled on one side and roasted on the other, or make so true a fish out of turnips as to deceive sight, taste, and smell. These antique masters of the gastronomic art knew how to suit each dish to the need and necessity of each guest. They held to the doctrine that the more the nourishment of the body is subtilized and alembicated, the more will the qualities of the mind be rarefied and quintessenced, too. For a young man destined to live in the atmosphere of a royal court, whipped cream and calves’ trotters were supplied by them; for a sprig of fashion, linnets’ heads, essence of May beetles, butterfly broth, and other light trifles; for a lawyer destined to the chicanery of his profession and for the glories of the bar, sauces of mustard and vinegar and other condiments of a bitter and pungent nature would be carefully provided.[55] As Lord Guloseton says, “The ancients seem to have been more mental, more imaginative, than we in their dishes; they fed their bodies, as well as their minds, upon delusion: for instance, they esteemed beyond all price the tongues of nightingales, because they tasted the very music of the birds in the organ of their utterance. That is the poetry of gastronomy.”

I noticed at a table near by a merry party. I afterward learned that it was composed of a number of fast young men from the city, who had come in to have a good dinner, and exhibit themselves, their garments, and their graces before the assembled guests; and that, when the hour of reckoning came, the needful wherewith to liquidate the little bill was not forthcoming. The landlord insisted that each one was liable for the whole, as there was no special agreement, (and this would generally be the case[56]) and that one who was solvent should pay the reckoning for all; but, unfortunately for Boniface, his clerk had been told beforehand that that moneyed man was the guest of the others, who were all as poor as Job’s peahens; so that the poor man had no recourse against the deadheads, in this direction, at all events,[57] and even the moneyed gent got a free dinner. The worthies swaggered out, singing in an undertone the words of an Ethiopian minstrel appropriate to the occasion.

* * * * * *

As my wife was returning to her room after dinner, she met a poor woman, whose daily walk in life was from the wash-tub to the clothes-line, looking in vain for some miserable sinner who had departed leaving his laundry bill unpaid. After endeavoring in vain to console the woman, Mrs. Lawyer, (who had a Quixotic way of interfering in other people’s troubles) came running back to me to ask if the hotel-keeper was not bound to pay for the washing. I told her of course not, unless he had been in the habit of paying the laundry bills of guests who had left; then an undertaking to that effect might be inferred, and it might be considered as evidence of an antecedent promise.[58] With this small crumb of comfort, my wife returned to the user of soap and destroyer of buttons.

While sitting, à la Mr. Briggs, in the smoking-room, “with my waistcoat unbuttoned, to give that just and rational liberty to the subordinate parts of the human commonwealth which the increase of their consequence after the hour of dinner naturally demands,” and gently, (as good Bishop Hall puts it) “whiffing myself away in nicotian incense to the idol of my intemperance,” a fellow-puffer spoke to me about the excessive charges of the house.

I told him that in the good old days of yore, and perchance even yet, an innkeeper who charged exorbitant prices might be indicted, and that our ancestors were wont to have the rates fixed by public proclamation.[59]

He then remarked that he would not mind about the prices, if the landlord had allowed him to do a little business in the place.

“Your right to lodge and be fed in the house gives you no right to carry on trade here,”[60] I replied.

“One of the waiters threatened to kick me yesterday for doing business.”

“Oh, if you are assaulted by any of the servants, the proprietor is liable to you in damages, though he was not himself present at the time, or even consenting thereto,”[61] I returned. Then, fearing lest I might be nourishing a viper in the shape of a book-agent, or vendor of patent articles, I left the room, the words of the poet running through my brain:

“Society is now one polished horde,
Formed of two mighty tribes—the Bores and Bored.”

Chapter III.
ACCIDENTS, ROOMS, DOGS.

Next morning, as we were arranging whither we would wend our way, I proposed taking a bus. My wife remarked positively that she wished that I would not use that vulgar word. I returned:

“Humph! Did you ever hear the story about Lord Campbell and the omnibus?”

“What was it?” she asked.

“A lawyer while arguing before him continually spoke of a certain kind of carriage as ‘a brougham,’ (pronouncing both syllables) whereupon his lordship, with that pomposity for which he was rather noted, remarked that ‘broom’ was the more usual, and not incorrect, pronunciation; that such pronunciation was open to no grave objection, and had the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering an extra syllable. Shortly afterward Campbell spoke of an ‘omnibus.’ The counsel whom he had shortly before corrected, jumped up with such promptitude that the judge was startled into silence, exclaiming: ‘Pardon me, my Lord, the carriage to which you draw attention is usually called ‘a bus’: that pronunciation is open to no grave objection, and has the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering two extra syllables.’ You can easily draw the moral from that little tale, my dear.”

Into a bus we got, and out of it we got, in course of time. We went up and down and in and out and roundabout, seeing the sights and doing the town like many another couple had done before us, and will do again during that most awkward of seasons, the honeymoon.

While my spouse gazed in at some lovely silks, sweet feathers, and ducks of bonnets, unmindful of the troubles that Moses underwent in obtaining the latter part of the Decalogue, I took the opportunity of instilling some legal doctrines and decisions into her head.

“Remember,” I said, “the solemn words of the poet:

‘Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.’”

“I fear that a woman like myself will have to wait very long before she gets her little wants supplied,” she saucily interjected.

“I was about to remark,” I sternly continued, “that if you are very extravagant in your wardrobe and tastes, I will not be liable to pay all your little bills. Once upon a time an English judge decided that a milliner could not make a husband pay £5,287 for bonnets, laces, feathers and ribbons supplied to his dear little wife during a few months.”[62]

“No power on earth could make you pay that sum, or anything like it; so don’t worry yourself, my darling,” coolly and somewhat sarcastically remarked Mrs. Lawyer.

“Please do not interrupt. In another case it was held that the price of a sea-side suit, some £67, could not be collected from a husband—a poor barrister—who had forbidden his wife to go to the watering place.”[63]

“He must have been a very poor lawyer if he never had a suit that cost more to some unfortunate client.”

“Again, the Rev. Mr. Butcher”——

“I like that name for a parson,” again interposed my wife. “It suggests, you know, a slender frame, a pale face, taper fingers.”

I paid no heed, but went on:

---- “Was excused payment of some £900 for birds—loreèes, avadavats, lovebirds, quakers, cutthroats—furnished his wife during the short space of ten months.”[64]

“But I will not be as extravagant as any of those misguided ladies were,” remarked my wife, most sensibly.

“Well, then, there will be no trouble. Everything necessary I will of course pay for willingly, as I could be made to pay for them, if unwilling. Even a piano, perhaps, I will stand;[65] or false teeth;[66] but, mind you, not quack medicines,[67] though you are a duck.”

“I am glad to hear ‘that you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food’; please begin now with the last named necessary article, for I am hungry.” Mrs. Lawyer was a practical woman.

“I presume it is time for lunch,” I replied. “Ah me! I wish lawyers in this nineteenth century could get their dinners as cheaply as they could in days gone by, when the client paid therefor, as appears in many an ancient register. The clerk of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, entered on his books that he paid to Robert Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel given, 3s. 8d., with 6d. for his dinner. Tempora mutantur. There’s a restaurant. Let us enter.”

We entered accordingly, and a very good luncheon we had, except for one slight contretemps. While engaged upon my macaroni soup, a long, reddish thread—as I surmised—revealed itself to my vision. Calling the waiter, I demanded how it came there.

“Ah!” said the man, quite cheerfully, “I can tell you where that came from. Our cook’s in love, sir, and is constantly opening a locket containing a lock of his sweetheart’s hair. Of course, some of it occasionally falls into the dishes.”

“Disgusting!” said my wife.

“Beastly!” said I.

The waiter calmly continued: “Beg pardon, sir, but would you mind giving me the hair? You see, the cook is so fond of her that he is quite pleased when I bring him back a stray hair or two.”

Of course, I knew that accidents will, etc.; and everything else was very good. My wife, however, wasted a good deal of time in listening in wondering amazement to the calculations made at an adjoining table.

“I don’t see how a waiter can remember such a long list of things, and tell what they all come to so rapidly; or how any two men could eat as much as those two did,” she remarked to me.

“Pshaw!” I replied, “that is nothing to Mr. Smallweed’s arithmetical powers, or to the gastronomic achievements of himself and his friends.”

“And pray what did Mr. S. do?” asked my wife.

“Why, when their little luncheon was over, and he was asked by the pretty waitress what they had had, he replied, without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Four veals and hams is 3 and 4 potatoes is 3 and 4 and one summer cabbage is 3 and 6 and 3 marrows is 4 and 6 and 6 breads is 5 and 3 Cheshires is 5 and 3 and 4 pints of half-and-half is 6 and 3 and 4 small rums is 8 and 3 and 3 Pollys is 8 and 6 and 8 and 6 in half a sovereign, Polly, and 18 pence out.’”

When we rose to leave the room, we found that some one had left before us with Mrs. Lawyer’s new umbrella. Silently I quitted the place, for I knew that it had been decided that a restaurant is not an inn, so as to charge the proprietor with the liabilities of an innkeeper toward transient persons who take their meals there; (and the same rule applies even though he does in fact keep in the same building an hotel, to which the eating-house is attached;[68]) and therefore it would be useless to expect the proprietor to make good the loss. Nor is a refreshment bar (where persons casually passing by receive the good things of this life at a counter) an inn, although it is connected with an hotel, and kept under the same license, but entered by a separate door from the street.[69] Where, however, a servant once asked permission to leave a parcel at a tavern, and the landlady refused to receive it; the man, being a thirsty soul, called for something to drink, putting the parcel on the floor behind him while imbibing, and while thus the spirit was descending more rapidly than it ever did in the most sensitive thermometer, the package disappeared, and never was seen again by the owner; yet the innkeeper was held responsible for the loss.[70]

An umbrella was bought and money expended for divers little odds and ends before we went back to the hotel for dinner. On our return, Mr. Deadhead and his wife entered the hotel just before us. They were country cousins of the proprietor’s, and had been asked to dinner, or had come without an invitation. As he was opening an inside door a large pane of glass fell out of it, and, slightly grazing his hand, shivered into a thousand pieces on the marble floor. I told him to rejoice that he had been fortunate enough to escape with the loss of but a drop or two of his vital fluid; for I remembered distinctly a similar accident happening to my father’s old friend, Southcote, in England, years ago; and although he sued the proprietor of the house, alleging that he (the landlord) was possessed of an hotel, into which he had invited S. as a visitor, and in which there was a glass door which it was necessary for him (S.) to open for the purpose of leaving, and which he, by the permission of the owner, and with his knowledge, and without any warning from him, lawfully opened, for the purpose aforesaid, as a door which was in a proper condition to be opened, yet, by and through the carelessness, negligence, and default of defendant, the door was then in an insecure and dangerous condition, and unfit to be opened; and, by reason of said door being in such insecure and dangerous condition, and of the then carelessness, negligence, default, and improper conduct of the defendant in that behalf, a large piece of glass fell from the door, and wounded Southcote—yet, although he said all this, the Court of Exchequer, with Pollock, C. B, at its head, decided that no cause of action against the proprietor was disclosed.[71] It was considered that a visitor in a house was in the same position as any other member of the establishment, so far as regards the negligence of the master or his servants, and must take his chance of accidents with the rest.[72] Baron Bramwell, however, well said that where a person is in the house of another, either on business or for any other lawful purpose, he has a right to expect that the owner will take reasonable care to protect him from injury, and will not leave trap-doors open down which he might fall, or take him into a garden among spring-guns and man-traps.[73]

At dinner—to which, in addition to the various condiments provided by mine host, we ourselves brought that best of sauces, hunger—there was seated at a neighboring table Mrs. Deadhead, a friend of the proprietor’s, as I have said, a lady of considerable amplitude of person, and extensively bedecked with the diamonds of Golconda, the gold of Australia, the lace of Lyons, the feathers of South Africa, the millinery of New York, and attired in a silk dress of most fashionable shape, color, and make. As a waiter was helping this very conspicuous member of society to a plate of soup, he caught his foot in the extensive train, stumbled, and placed the soup in her ladyship’s lap—minus the plate. Great was the commotion, loud the reproaches, abject the apologies.

My wife thereupon whispered to me that the upset would not have mattered much if the soup was any like hers.

“Why not?” I queried, in some surprise, and anxious to learn as speedily as possible the chemical peculiarities of a lady’s toilet.

“Because then the dress would have been turned into a watered silk,” was the only answer I got.

It was some time before I saw the point, and then I smiled a dreary, weary smile, and remarked that I hoped the lady was able to re-dress herself, for I thought that she could get no redress from the proprietor—at least, that legal luminary, Pollock, C. B., so insinuated on one occasion.[74]

My wife grew fidgety because the waiters were somewhat tardy in filling her orders.

“Look,” she said, “at those lazy fellows! Half a dozen of them doing nothing, while we are kept waiting, still waiting.”

“Doubtless,” I replied, “they have been deeply impressed with the truth of that grand old Miltonic line:

‘They also serve who only stand to wait.’”

* * * * * *

While taking my post-prandial smoke, my interrogator of the previous evening again approached me, and asked, in a grumbling voice, if the landlord had a right to turn him out of one room, and put him into another.

“Oh, yes,” I replied; “he has the sole right of selecting the apartment for each guest, and, if he finds it expedient, may change the room and assign his patron another. There is no implied contract that one to whom a particular room has been given shall retain it so long as he chooses to pay for it.[75] You pay your money, but you don’t take your choice.”

“But I liked the room so much,” said Mr. Complaining Grumbler.

“It matters not. The proprietor is not bound to comply with your caprices.[76] When you go to an hotel you have only a mere easement of sleeping in one room, and eating and drinking in another, as Judge Maule once remarked.”[77]

“Can he turn me out of the house altogether?”

“Certainly not, if you behave yourself; unless, indeed, you neglect or refuse to pay your bill upon reasonable demand.”[78]

“I am going away by the night train,” said Mr. C. G., “and I did not wish to go to bed; so he insisted upon taking my room, and told me I might stay in the parlor until I left.”

“And quite right, too. Although he cannot make you go to bed, or turn you out of doors because you do not choose to sleep, still you cannot insist upon having a bed-room in which to sit up all night, if you are furnished with another room proper for that purpose.”[79]

“I intend returning in the afternoon; can he refuse to take care of my traps while I am absent?”

“I fancy not, for a temporary absence does not affect the rights of a guest.[80] Long since, it was laid down as law that if one comes to an inn with a hamper, in which he has goods, and goes away, leaving it with the host, and in a few days comes back, but in the meantime his goods are stolen, he has no action against the host, for at the time of stealing he was not his guest, and by keeping the hamper the innkeeper had no benefit, and therefore is not chargeable with the loss of it. But it would be otherwise if the man is absent but from morn to dewy eve;[81] and where, in New York State, a guest, after spending a few days at an hotel, gave up his room, left his valise—taking a check for it—and was gone eight days, without paying his bill; on returning, he registered his name, took a room, and called for his bag, when another appeared in its place, having the duplicate check attached: the Court of Common Pleas held that, whether the case was considered as an ordinary bailment, or as property in an inn keepers’ hands, on which he had a lien, he was bound to exercise due care and diligence, and that he must account for the loss, the changing of the check being evidence of negligence.”[82]

I rose to leave the room, for I was growing weary of this catechetical performance; but my questioner’s budget was not yet exhausted, and, as I made my exit, I heard him say:

“Pardon me—one inquiry more: I was at the St. Nicholas last week when it was burnt down, and I lost some of my clothes. Is the owner liable to make good the damage sustained?”[83]

I heeded not, and went to seek my wife. After some search through the magnificent drawing-rooms of our sumptuous hotel, I at length found her in an elegant parlor, seated at a piano, and gently playing some sweet melodies. As I approached, she motioned me to be cautious. When I reached her, I saw that a large spider was stationed at the edge of the piano cover, apparently drinking in the harmony of sweet sounds to the utmost extent of his arachnidian nature. My advent broke the spell, and away the little hairy darkey rushed, hand over hand, up his tiny cable of four thousand twisted strands, till he was safe in the cornice of the ceiling. My wife was charmed at her novel listener, and exclaimed: “Did you ever see such a thing?”

“No, but I have read of it,” I replied. “Michelet, in his charming book on ‘The Insect,’ tells that a little musical prodigy, who at eight astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin, was forced to practice long weary hours in solitude. There was a spider, however, in the room, which, entranced by the melodious strains, grew more and more familiar, until at length it would climb upon the mobile arm that held the bow. Little Berthome needed no other listener to kindle his enthusiasm. But a cruel step-mother appeared on the scene suddenly one day, and with a single blow of her slipper annihilated the octopedal audience. The child fell to the ground in a deathlike faint, and in three months was a corpse—dead from a broken heart.”

“How sad!” said Mrs. Lawyer, in husky tones, as she blew her nose in a suspicious manner.

“Then there was also the musical spider of Pellison”—— A little snarleyow of a dog here rushed in and barked so vigorously and furiously that my wife never heard more of that spider. I tried to turn the wretched creature out, but a puppy following—the owner—requested me to leave it alone. I must say that I heartily concur with Mr. Justice Manisty (and I sincerely trust that my concurrence will afford encouragement to the learned gentleman in his arduous office) in holding that a guest cannot, under any circumstances, insist upon bringing a dog into any room in a hotel where other guests are. On the same occasion on which Judge Manisty expressed his views, Kelly, C. B., remarked that he would not lay down the rule positively that under no circumstances would a guest have a right to bring a dog into an inn; there might possibly, he observed, be circumstances in which, if a person came to an inn with a dog, and the innkeeper refused to put up the animal in any stable or outbuilding, and there was nothing that could make the canine a cause of alarm or an annoyance to others, its owner might be justified in bringing it into the house. His lordship, however, considered that a landlord had a right to refuse to provide for the wants of a visitor who insisted upon coming with two very large St. Bernard mastiffs, one a fierce creature, that had to be muzzled, the other a dog of a gentler nature, but somewhat given to that bad habit referred to in those Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out, and by the apostle St. Peter in his second epistle.[84]

* * * * * *

The next day there was a gentle ripple of excitement pervading the house. Two cases of larceny came to light, and made the guests communicative and talkative.

In one case a Mr. Blank, his wife, and amiable and accomplished daughter, (I can vouch for the correctness of these adjectives; for I had a very pleasant chat—to call it by a mild name—with her one day, while Mrs. Lawyer was lying down after dinner) had a sitting-room and bedroom en suite, so arranged that when the sitting-room door was open one could see the entrances into both bedrooms. Mrs. B., being in her room, laid upon the bed her reticule, in which was a by no means despicable sum of money. She then rejoined her spouse and daughter in the sitting-room, leaving the door between the two apartments open. Some five minutes after, she sent Miss Blank—who was not too proud to run a short errand for her kind mamma—for the bag; but lo! it was gone, and was never again found by a member of the Blank family; for

“In vain they searched each cranny of the house,
Each gaping chink impervious to a mouse.”

The other robbery was of the goods of a young Englishman, who, the previous evening, had been boastfully exhibiting some sovereigns in the smoking-room. When he went to bed he had placed his watch and money on a table in his room, left his door open, and, on morning dawning, was surprised to find his time-piece and cash vanished with the early dew. Other people would have been surprised if they had remained.

I fell into conversation on the subject of these depredations with a gentleman whom I afterward discovered to be a member of Lincoln’s Inn, a place which bears very little resemblance to our American hotels.

“’Tis very strange,” said Mr. Learned Inthelaw, “how history repeats itself, even in insignificant matters.”

I bowed, and remarked: “A very sensible man once observed that there was nothing new under the sun.”

“He did not live, however, in this our nineteenth century,” was the reply. “But what I was going to say was that there are two cases reported in our English law-books exactly similar to the two occurrences of to-day.”

“That is singular. What were the decisions?”

“In the reticule case,[85] the hotel-keeper was held responsible for the loss; in the other,[86] it was considered that the guest had been guilty of negligence so as to absolve the host. You know that with us it was decided, about the time that Columbus was discovering America, that an innkeeper is liable for the goods of his guests if damaged or stolen while under his care as an innkeeper;[87] and in such cases he is not freed from his grave responsibility by showing that neither himself nor his servants are to blame, but in every event he is liable unless the loss or injury is caused by the act of God, or the queen’s enemies, or the fault, direct or implied, of the guest[88]—and that even though the poor man has not only not been negligent, but has even been diligent in his efforts to save the property of his guest.”[89]

“The rule is the same with us,”[90] I replied, “and it extends to all personal property the guest brings with him, whatever may be the value or the kind.[91] And if the proprietor happens to be absent he is still liable for the conduct of those he has left in charge.[92] Innkeepers, as well as common carriers, are regarded as insurers of the property committed to their care. The law rests on the same principles of policy here as in England and other countries, and is wise and reasonable.”[93]

“But it seems very severe upon innkeepers,” remarked a by-stander.

“Rigorous as the law may seem, my dear sir,” replied my friend of Lincoln’s Inn, “and hard as it may actually be in one or two particular instances, yet it is founded on the great principle of public utility to which all private considerations ought to yield; for travelers, who must be numerous in a rich and commercial country, are obliged to rely almost implicitly on the good faith of innkeepers, whose education and morals are often none of the best, and who might have frequent opportunities for associating with ruffians and pilferers; while the injured guest could seldom or never obtain legal proof of such combinations, or even of their negligence, if no actual fraud had been committed by them.”[94]

“What did the old Roman law say on the subject?” inquired old Dr. Dryasdust, who considered that nothing done or said on the hither side of the Middle Ages was worthy of consideration.

“They, sir, were equally anxious to protect the public against dishonest publicans, and by their edicts gave an action against them if the goods of travelers were lost or hurt by any means except damno fatali, or by inevitable accident; and even then Ulpian intimates that innkeepers were not altogether restrained from knavish practices or suspicious neglect.”[95]

“Still,” said the by-stander aforesaid, “I do not see how the reticule can be considered to have been under our landlord’s care.”

“To render him liable it is not necessary that the goods be placed in his special keeping, or brought to his special notice. If they be in the inn, brought there in an ordinary and reasonable way by a guest, it is sufficient to charge the proprietor.”[96]

“Yes,” I chimed in, “and it does not matter in what part of the hotel the goods are kept, whether ‘up-stairs, or down-stairs, or in the lady’s chamber’: while they are anywhere within it, they are under the care of Boniface, and he is responsible for their safe custody. He is equally liable, whether baggage is put in a bedroom, a horse handed over to the care of the hostler,[97] or goods placed in an outhouse belonging to the establishment and used for that sort of articles.[98] My friend Epps, on one occasion, went to an inn down in Mississippi, and had his trunk taken to his bedroom, and it being broken into at night and the money purloined, the innkeeper was held liable.”[99]

“A friend of mine,” said the English gent, “who was in the employ of a sweet fellow of the name of Candy, on arriving at an inn gave his luggage to Boots, who placed one package in the hall; afterwards the servant wished to carry it into the commercial room, but the owner requested him to leave it where it was; the parcel mysteriously disappeared, and the innkeeper had the pleasure of paying for it.”[100]

“In fact, I believe an innkeeper cannot make his guest take care of his own goods;[101] nor is a traveler bound to deposit his valuables in the hotel safe, even though he may know that there is one kept for the reception of such articles, and there is a regulation of the house requiring articles of value to be so deposited,”[102] I remarked.

“Are you not stating that rather broadly?” questioned my legal confrere.

“No Vatican Council has proclaimed me infallible. I know full well that when the poet said ‘to err is human,’ he spoke truth. Of course, I am speaking only of the rule in States in which there is no special law or statute on the point, limiting the liability of publicans,” I replied.

“I think, however,” said Mr. Inthelaw, the Englishman, “that it has been held that the innkeeper may refuse to be responsible for the safe custody of the guest’s goods unless they are put in a certain place, and if the guest objects to this, the host will be exonerated in case of loss.[103] And a guest who has actual notice of a regulation of the inn as to the deposit of valuables, and has not complied with it, takes the risk of loss happening from any cause, except, of course, the actual sins of emission and commission of the landlord or his servants.”[104]

“And very reasonably,” remarked a by-stander.

“But clear and unmistakable notice of these regulations restricting the publican’s liability must certainly be given,”[105] I asserted. “And,” I continued, “I believe a distinction has been taken, and it appears to rest upon good reason, between those effects of a traveler not immediately requisite to his comfort, and those essential to his personal convenience, and which it is necessary that he should have constantly about him; so that, though personally notified, he is not bound to deposit the latter with the innkeeper. And, perhaps, this distinction will explain the apparently contradictory decisions.”[106]

“Doubtless the notice must be clear. Even a printed notification is not sufficient. It must be brought home to the mind of the guest, or at least to his knowledge, before he enters and takes possession of his room, so that, if he does not like the regulations, he may go elsewhere.[107] In one case, the register was headed with the notice, ‘Money and valuables, it is agreed, shall be placed in the safe in the office; otherwise, the proprietor will not be liable for loss’; and Mr. Bernstein duly entered his name in the book; still he was not held bound by the notice, as there was no proof that it was seen or assented to by him.”[108]

By-stander here remarked: “My father kept an inn in New York State, and once told a man of the name of Purvis, when he arrived at the house, that there was a safe for valuables, and that he would not be responsible for his unless they were placed in it. Purvis, however, neglected the caution, and left $2,000 in gold in a trunk in his bed-room, locked the door, and gave the key to my father. Some thief broke through and stole, and Purvis tried to make the old gentleman responsible for the theft; but the court did not agree with him, and considered that he alone must bear the loss.”[109]

“The host is not liable for the loss of goods if, at the time of their disappearance, they were in the exclusive possession of their owner,[110] and it will generally be left to an intelligent jury to say whether or not the articles were in the sole custody of the guest,”[111] remarked Mr. Inthelaw.

“What do you mean?” asked one.

“For instance, where a Brummagem man, traveling for orders, came to an inn with three boxes of goods; the travelers’ room did not meet with his approbation, so he asked for another one up stairs, where he might display his wares. The lady of the house gave him one with a key in the door, and told him to keep it locked. The boxes were taken to the new apartment, and after dining in the travelers’ room, the Brummagem gent—who seemed inclined to put on airs—took his precious self into the new room, and there also he took his wine. After his repast, he exhibited his wares—chiefly jewelry—to a customer, and in the cool of the evening went out to see the town, leaving the door unlocked, and the key outside. (So the reporter tells us, though why he need have taken the trouble to leave the door unlocked if the key was on the outside, or the key outside if the door was unlocked, I cannot understand.) While he was away, two of his boxes went away, too. He sued the proprietor of the house for damages, but got nothing. He applied for a new trial, but with like success. Lord Ellenborough remarked that it seemed to him that the care of the goods in a room used for the exhibition of the goods to persons over whom the innkeeper could have no check or control hardly fell within the limits of his duty as an innkeeper; that the room was not merely intrusted to our friend in the ordinary character of a guest frequenting an inn, but that he must be understood as having special charge of it. And another learned judge gave it as his sentiments that the traveler should be taken to have received the favor of the private room cum onere; that is, he accepted it upon the condition of taking the goods under his own care.”[112]

“But,” I said, “of course, simply ordering goods to be placed in a particular room is not such a taking under one’s own care as to absolve an innkeeper from his responsibility.[113] I recollect a case where a traveler, on arriving, requested his impedimenta, as old Cæsar used to say, to be taken to the commercial room; they were, and they were stolen, and the innkeeper was held bound to recoup the man, although he proved that the usual practice of the house was to place the luggage in the guest’s room, and not in the commercial room, unless an express order was given to the contrary. The chief justice remarked that if mine host had intended not to be responsible unless his guests chose to have their goods placed in their sleeping apartments, or such other place as to him might seem meet, he should have told them so.”[114]

By-stander observed that the law seemed inconsistent, as there did not appear to be much difference between the two cases.

“Mr. Justice Holroyd distinguished the latter from the former case by saying that the Birmingham man asked to have a room which he used for the purposes of trade, not merely as a guest in the inn.[115] In Wisconsin, it was held that the retention by a guest of money or valuables upon his person was not such exclusive control as to exonerate an innkeeper from liability, if the loss was not induced by the negligence or misconduct of the guest,”[116] remarked one who knew whereof he affirmed.

“An hotel-keeper is of course liable for the conduct of another guest, placed in a room already occupied, without the consent of the occupant.[117] And where a guest left his door unlocked, because he was told that he must either do so or get up in the night and open it, as others had to share the room with him, the innkeeper was held liable for everything lost.”[118]

This very learned and intensely uninteresting discussion was here summarily put a stop to by the appearance in the room of several ladies who had respectively claims upon the respective talkers, and who were ready and willing to inspect the inside of the luncheon hall.

“How singularly our hours of refection have changed,” remarked Mr. L. Inthelaw. “You remember that in the sixteenth century the saying was:

‘Lever à cinq, diner à neuf,
Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf,
Fait vivre d’ans nonante et neuf.’

“And even in the early days of the reign of Louis XIV the dinner hour of the court was eleven o’clock, or noon at the latest.”

“Yes,” I replied, “I have noticed that the historians say that one of the causes which hastened the death of Louis XII was his changing his dinner hour from nine to twelve at the solicitation of his wife. What a fine house this is!”

“Well, sir,” was the response, “believe a stranger and a foreigner when he tells you that, good as are some of the hotels in Europe, the American ones surpass them all both in size and in general fitness of purpose.”

“I am glad to hear you say so. I presume that the great extent of our territory, the natural disposition of our people to travel, our extensive network of railways, have developed our hotel system, and made it, as you say, without a parallel in the world,” I replied.

“Have you traveled much, sir?” asked Mrs. Lawyer.

“Yes, well nigh all round the world. And so, I flatter myself, I have had more experience in hotels than most men.”

“You must have seen a great variety,” I remarked.

The Englishman smilingly replied: “In far off China I have carried about my own bedding from inn to inn, not caring to occupy that in which a Celestial, a Tartar, or a Russian had slept the night before. In France, I have taken around my little piece of soap, an almost unknown luxury in Continental hotels. In India, I have lodged in the dak bungalows provided by the government, where the articles of furniture are like donkey’s gallops—few and far between. There you must manage the commissariat department yourself if you would not starve. I remember once stopping at one of the best country hotels in the Bombay Presidency, and was given a sitting-room, a bed-room, and a bath-room; but in the first a number of birds had built their nests, and flew in and out and roundabout at their pleasure; in the bed-room a colony of ants swarmed over the floor, while in my third room cockroaches and other creeping things gave a variegated hue to the pavement; everything else was in keeping.”

“Horrors!” exclaimed Mrs. L.

“Unpleasant, to say the least,” I remarked, “unless, indeed, you were a naturalist.”

“I think,” continued our traveled friend, “that one never feels at home in an European hotel. You never know your landlord or your fellow-sojourners; the table d’hôte in the grand dining-halls prevents all intercourse between the guests; they never have a smoking-room, a billiard-room, a bar-room, or a bath-room; if you want to do ‘tumbies’ you are furnished with a regular old tub.”

“I know that from experience”, said my wife. “Once at a grand hotel in Florence I wanted a bath, and was promised one. By-and-by, as I sat at my window in the gloaming, I saw a man trundling a handcart containing a bath and some barrels. In a few minutes two men solemnly ushered this identical tub into my room, then in three successive trips they brought in three barrels of water, two cold, the other hot; a sheet was spread over the bath, and the water allowed to gurgle out of the bunghole into it, while with uprolled sleeve the swarthy Italian mingled the hot and the cold with his hand till what he considered a suitable temperature was gained. When all was ready, the man coolly asked how soon he should come back for his apparatus. Actually there was neither bath nor water in the hotel, although the Arno rolled beneath its windows. As you say, bath-rooms are unknown in civilized Europe.”

“Then, again,” I said, “if you want your dinner, and are not at table d’hôte, you must write out a list of what you want as long as a newspaper editorial, hand it in, and wait longer than it would take to set it up in type before the eatables appear. I have known people wait an hour at swell hotels, and then go away unsatisfied.”

“There are plenty of hotels in all large English towns,” said our friend; “but none a quarter of the size of the large caravansaries to be found in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or San Francisco. Their exteriors are rather fine, a few rooms are well furnished; but, on the whole, they are dark and dingy.”

“Were you ever at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, in Paris?” asked my wife.

“Yes. What a splendid place it is! The dining-room is not the largest, but it is as fine as any in the world; its ornamentation is so chaste, its chandeliers so splendid, its mirrors so magnificent, and the dinner is perfection; in fact, as some one says, it is the elysium of the bon-vivants and the paradise of the esthetic. But if I go on in this style you will take me for a ‘runner’ for first-class hotels.” We then passed on to another subject, as the reader must to another chapter.

Chapter IV.
GUESTS, WAGERS, AND GAMES.

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.”

“But who is a traveler?”

“One who is absent from his home, whether on pleasure or business.[122] A townsman or neighbor, who is actually traveling, may be a guest.[123] In a New York case, where a resident of the town left his horses at the inn stables, it was decided that the proprietor was not liable for them.[124] So if a ball is given at an hotel the guests present cannot hold the proprietor liable for any losses occurring while they are tripping the light fantastic toe, as he did not receive them in his public capacity.”[125]

“But,” remarked a person standing by, “but how would it be if a traveler left his baggage at an hotel and stopped elsewhere?”

“If one leaves any dead thing, as baggage, at an inn he will not be considered a guest;[126] if, on the other hand, he leaves a horse, he becomes entitled to all the privileges and immunities of a guest, even though he himself lodges elsewhere.”[127]

“Why the difference?” quoth one.

“I might, perhaps, be more correct if I said that on this point the authorities are antagonistic.[128] The distinction, however, was made because, as the horse must be fed, the innkeeper has a profit out of it, whereas he gets nothing out of a dead thing.[129] One need not, however, take all his meals or lodge every night at the inn where his baggage is. It is sufficient if he takes a room and lodges or boards at the house part of the time.”[130]

“I think I have heard that if one makes an agreement for boarding by the week, he ceases to have the rights of a guest,” said the previous speaker.

“The length of time for which a person resides at an hotel does not affect his rights, so long as he retains his transient character;[131] nor does he cease to be a guest by proposing after his arrival to remain a certain time, nor by his ascertaining the charges, nor by paying in advance, nor from time to time as his wants are supplied,[132] nor even by arranging to pay so much a week for his board, if he stays so long, after he has taken up his quarters at the house;[133] but if when he first arrives he makes a special agreement as to board,[134] or for the use of a room,[135] he never becomes a guest, and the innkeeper’s liability is totally different, being only that of an ordinary bailee. One visiting a boarder at an inn is a guest, and the keeper is liable for the loss of his goods, though not of the boarder’s.”[136]

“And when does a person cease to have the rights of a guest?” again queried the questioner.

I replied, “An innkeeper’s liability, as such, ceases when the guest pays his bill and quits the house with the declared intention of not returning, and if he then leaves any of his possessions behind him, the landlord is no longer liable for their safe keeping, unless he has taken special charge of them, and then only as any other common bailee would be.[137] And this appears to be so, even when an arrangement has been made for the keep of the guest’s horse.[138] Unless specially authorized, a clerk cannot bind his master by an agreement to keep safely a guest’s baggage after he leaves.”[139]

“But supposing one pays his bills and goes off expecting to have his traps sent after him immediately to the station?” questioned a new interrogator.

“Mrs. Clark went to ‘The Exchange Hotel’ in Atlanta, with eight trunks; on leaving, the porter of the inn took charge of the baggage, promising to deliver it for her at the cars. He lost two of the pieces, and it was held that the liability of the hotel-keeper continued until such delivery was actually made.[140] On the same principle that when an innkeeper sends his porter to the cars to receive the baggage of intending guests, he is responsible until it is actually re-delivered into the custody of the guests. And where a man paid his bill for the whole day and went off, leaving his trunk, with twenty cents for porterage, to be sent to the boat, the innkeeper was held liable until the baggage was actually put on board.[141] The liability for baggage left with an innkeeper with his consent, continues for a reasonable time after the settlement of the bill, and even after a reasonable time he is responsible for gross negligence.[142] Where a visitor had actual notice that the landlord would not be responsible for valuables unless put under his care, and on preparing to depart gave a trunk containing precious goods into the care of the servants and it was lost, yet the innkeeper was held liable.[143] So, also, where valuables were stolen from a trunk after the guest had packed it, locked his room, and given notice of his departure, and delivered the key of his room to the clerk to have the trunk brought down.[144] What is all that row about?”

Weary of the conversation, and being attracted by some rather loud conversation in another part of the room, I walked off to see what it was all about, and soon found that it was anent a young lady’s age.

“I bet you she is—” began one of the disputants.

“Stop!” I cried, “that is not a proper wager.”

“Begad! what do you mean, sir?” was queried in tones not the mildest.

“Simply that where a wager concerns the person of another, no action can be maintained upon it. As Buller, J., once remarked, a bet on a lady’s age, or whether she has a mole on her face, is void. No person has a right to make it a subject of discussion in a court of justice, whether she passes herself in the world to be more in the bloom of youth than she really is, or whether what is apparent to every one who sees her, is a mole or a wart; although a lady cannot bring an action against a man for saying she is thirty-three when she passes for only twenty-three, nor for saying she has a wart on her face. Nor will the courts try a wager as to whether a young lady squints with her right eye or with her left.[145] And Lord Mansfield came to very much the same conclusion in discussing the law in a celebrated wager case concerning the gender of a certain individual,[146] because, as his lordship remarked, actions on such wagers would disturb the peace of individuals and society.”

“Confound it, the fellow seems to have swallowed a law library,” muttered one man; while another said,

“But surely many wagers equally as absurd have been sued on in courts of law with success.”

“There is no doubt of that,” I replied. “It was done upon a bet of ‘six to four that Bob Booby would win the plate at the New Lichfield races;’[147] also, upon a wager of a ‘rump and dozen’ whether one of the betters were older than the other.[148] In the latter case the C. J. modestly said that he did not judicially know what a ‘rump and dozen’ meant; but another judge more candidly remarked that privately he knew that it meant a good dinner and wine. And a bet as to whose father would die first was held good, although one old man was defunct at the time, the fact not being known to the parties.[149] But Lord Ellenborough refused to try an action on a wager on a cock-fight.”[150]

“Although at common law many wagers were legal,” remarked the English gentleman alluded to aforetime, “still, in England, as the law now stands, all wagers are null and void at law,[151] and if the loser either cannot or won’t pay, the law will not assist the winner;[152] but either party may recover the stake deposited by him, before it is paid over to the winner by the holder. That point was settled in the case of a genius who bet all the philosophers, divines, and scientific professors in the United Kingdom, £500, that they could not prove the rotundity and revolution of the earth from Scripture, from reason, or from fact, the wager to be won by the taker if he could exhibit to the satisfaction of an intelligent referee a convex railway, canal, or lake.”[153]

“Was the referee satisfied?” asked a bystander.

“Yes; it was proved to his satisfaction that on a canal, in a distance of six miles, there was a curvature to and fro of five feet, more or less. And then the man asked his stake back, and got it, too.”

“In New York,” I said, “it has been held, under a statute giving the losing party a right of action against the stake-holder for the stake, whether the stake has been paid over by the stake-holder or not, and whether the wager be lost or not, that the holder is liable to the loser, although he had paid over the stake by his directions.[154] And in several of the States, if the wager is illegal, the stake-holder is liable to be made refund the stakes, notwithstanding payment to the winner.”[155]

“Such decisions are subversive of all honor and honesty,” said a betting looking character.

“Not so. A bet should be a contract of honor, and no more. One should not bet unless he can trust his opponent. The time of the courts of law should not be taken up by such matters.”

“Are the American courts as hard upon wagers as the English?” asked the Englishman.

“Quite so,” I replied. “In some parts of the country they have been prohibited by statute, and some courts have denied them any validity whatever. In Colorado it was held that the courts had enough to do without devoting their time to the solution of questions arising out of idle bets made on dog and cock-fights, horse-races, the speed of trains, the construction of railroads, the number on a dice, or the character of a card that may be turned up.[156] Even if admitted to be valid in any case, it is quite clear upon the authorities that they cannot be upheld where they refer to the person or property of another, so as to make him infamous or to injure him, or if they are libelous, or indecent, or tend to break the peace.[157] In some States it has been decided that wagers upon the result of elections are against public policy, and therefore void. In California, during the presidential campaign of 1868, a man called Johnson bet that Horatio Seymour would have a majority of votes in that State, while one Freeman bet that U. S. Grant would be the lucky man. Mr. Russell was the stake-holder. After the result of the election was known, Johnson demanded his money back, but Russell honorably paid it over to the winner; so J. turned round and sued for it. The Court held, that if Johnson had repudiated his bet and asked for his money before the election, or before the result was known, he might have got it, but that now he was too late.[158] Judge Sanderson remarked that in times of political excitement persons might be provoked to make wagers which they might regret in their cooler moments. No obstacles, he thought, should be thrown in the way of their repentance, and if they retracted before the bet has been decided, their money ought to be returned; but those who allow their stakes to remain until after the wager has been decided and the result known, are entitled to no such consideration; their tears, if any, are not repentant tears, but such as crocodiles shed over the victims they are about to devour.”[159]

“Ah, then it has been judicially decided that crocodiles weep,” sarcastically observed a bystander.

From talking on wagering, we naturally passed to the subject of gaming—a kindred vice.