CALL it My Hotel, simply because it is there that I live. Otherwise, to tell the truth, I hold no special interest in it. I do not own an inch of its carved front, or even a leg of any of the rosewood chairs with which its halls are furnished. Throughout all that range of vestibules, saloons, and private rooms, I can maintain a legitimate, lawful right to but one article-an old worn leather trunk, which, for years, has stood in the corner of my little apartment and held my stock of bachelor apparel. Of all the compartments in that noble pile of buildings, the one which I am allowed to occupy is the tiniest-a very closet in dimensions-reached only by a furlong or so of staircase-and lighted by a three-feet-by-four window; from which, when disposed, for an hour or two of quiet contemplation, I can look out over miles of house-roofs, varied, occasionally, by a tall church-steeple or bell-tower. And I have a certain unpleasant feeling that I should be ignominiously turned out of even this little room, if, at the end of the month, I should refuse to disburse sundry dollars and cents at the office. No; it is very certain that I do not own the hotel.

Sometimes, though, in my higher and more imaginative flights of fancy, I cherish a fiction that, after all, I do have a valid claim to the whole establishment. For, even if the title-deeds were in my own name, what more enjoyment could I take out of it than I do now? I walk into the reading-room, and no one opposes my right to a seat. The halls and saloons are alike at any disposal. In the dining-room I have my accustomed place near the head of the table, where it is my privilege to call for any article upon the long board, as freely as though I have actually given my check in payment of all the china, glass, and silver with their contents. A tall, good looking negro respectfully stands behind my chair, and bows down to me as subserviently as though he were my own peculiar property. And to maintain

that vast establishment. with all its halls and offices, its marbled floors and frescoed ceilings, its rosewood, plate, and mirrors, its clerks, and waiters, and laundresses, I have no trouble worthy of mention. I have merely, once a month, to hand in at the office a few

crisp bills, and the work is done-the care is off my mind. My organized bands of confidential superintendents then do the rest, without in the least withdrawing my mind from other cares. All which is pretty much the idea of one of my friends, a bank-clerk, who says:

"You see, when people talk about the expense of living at hotels, they must remember that it covers something besides eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and all that For, you know, we have the run of the house besides, and can do just what we please in any part of it! and it would cost a great deal more to keep up a private house in the same style, reckon. Now, there is our cashier, who has a fine house in one of the avenues, and keeps a good table, and spends a great many thousands a year; but even he hasn't such a smoking-room, and reading-room, and halls to loaf in-of course he hasn't. And if he had, he wouldn't get any more good out of them than we do here; for, as long as we can use all these, don't you see that they just as good as belong to us while we stay? So there it is, you know."

It is true that there are hundreds of others who enjoy the like freedom, and, in the same manner, perhaps, could claim equal ownership with me; but these are people whom I allow to be about me for the pleasure it gives me to see strange faces. It is true that sometimes at dinner, my negro, not having received his weekly gratuity, forgets that I own him, and pays me so little attention that I am likely to starve through waiting; but I am a polite man, and no gentleman should allow himself to be helped before his guests. And it is true that, sometimes, as I leave my little room beneath the roof, and, passing through those weary halls and down those everlasting staircases, glance into No. 32, upon the second floor, magnificent with soft carpets and marble mantels, pendant chandeliers and rosewood sofas, I am inclined to wish that my bank account were large enough to allow me to exchange my quarters; but, after all, the air is purer up aloft, and the city turmoil there grows fainter to the ear, and there is no host who does not, occasionally, give up his own snug quarters to a friend. And at such times, it is my pleasing belief that No. 32 is

actually my own apartment-that I have merely surrendered it for a time to an intimate acquaintance-and that, after a few weeks, when my friend has departed, I shall reoccupy it, and no fonger lodge in No. 783, just under the roof. This is my theory, I say; but somehow, when one guest leaves No. 32, another enters. It is always full; and, meanwhile, it has happened that, while waiting for the vacancy, I have remained, year after year, in No. 783, until I have learned every crack in its walls, and stain upon its carpet, and spot upon its window-panes, by heart.

I may have spoken disparagingly of No. 783; but, in good truth, it has many advantages. I do not feel in it that embarrassment of carefulness which so naturally attends the occupation of more pretentious apartments. There is nothing about it which I need fear injuring-nothing which I may not make use of with perfectly wanton freedom. I can place my pitcher upon the little painted wash-stand without danger of scratching the wood; for it is hopelessly scratched already. A large hole has been worn in the carpet, and the dragging about of the heaviest furniture for months could not impair the value of at least that square yard. The bedstead is covered by a glaring cotton quilt, upon which I can throw myself to read, with easy tranquillity, and without the necessity of previously removing my dusty boots. I can write my name or make my calculations upon the plaster wall with perfect impunity, for the records of a lifetime upon it could scarcely do that injury which has already been accomplished by a single leakage in the roof. In fact, that portion of the wall which is near the head of my bed already contains all my weekly washing registers. In fine, with true bachelor freedom, I can do anything and everything in No. 783; whereas I know that, if I were located in No. 32, I would be obliged to move about with uncomfortable watchfulness, and could never drive from my mind the impression that I was making a call in another person's parlor, and was waiting for him to come

in.

Moreover, No. 783 has its social advantages. I have three particular friends-the bank-clerk, a poet, and an editor, who patronizes the poet. At stated periods they all tramp up into

The

my room, and we prepare to make an evening of it. Cards are brought out, and the game of whist commenced. Light and harmless wines circulate, and we become pleasantly convivial. Jests are spoken and greeted with shouts of laughter, and full choruses of lively song and ballad swell forth to drown the murmur of the city below us. stars above may hear our melodies; but they gleefully wink at them. Our nextdoor neighbors may hear; but we know that we disturb them not-one is a good-natured German wine-importer, and the other a professional organist. We know them both, and they sometimes join us; while, at other times, in the pauses of our song, we can hear through the thin walls, on either side, a lively strain or two, betokening neighborly and sympathetic concord. But, were we in No. 32, all this conviviality of soul would necessarily be chastened into quiet decorum. We would then be beneath the range of jovial bachelorhood and in the family stratum. Upon either side there would be children who would be awakened by our laughter and would cry. There would be mothers who would wonder why those noisy, horrid men were tolerated in such a respectable neighborhood. In fine, there would not be a jest or song which would not be closely followed by its peevish crowd of troubles and complaints. In evidence of which, I remember that, one evening, as I was returning in merry mood, I happened to strike up a strain or two of Jordan, just as I passed No. 32; when suddenly the door opened, and a gentleman, upon whose vinegar countenance I thought the reflection of damask curtains and gilt chandeliers might have shed a little gleam of urbanity, popped out his head, and growled anathemas upon me. I made no reply; but as soon as I reached my own No. 783, I solaced myself with Jordan, from beginning to end, in the loudest tones, and heard my German wine-importing neighbor playfully respond in the very deepest bass of Casta Diva.

And then, again, No. 783 is the very place for a lonely man. Were I in No. 32, I think that I should perpetually pine for company; for the stately array of rosewood and damask furniture would, somehow, strike a chill into my heart, and fill me with a constant and neverdying impression that all such things were made for others to enjoy with me,

and that I had no business to monopolize them. But No. 783, being such a diminutive and poorly-furnished apartment, shows, at once, that it was made for the residence of but one person, and he a careless-minded man at that; and, consequently, I always feel that there is a fitness in my association with it. It is like Robinson Crusoe's cave, which, in its insignificance and wildness, became a home to him; whereas, everybody knows that if Robinson, upon stepping ashore, had found a splendid palace, with audience-chambers, and chapels, and ball-rooms, and widely-extended ranges of stables, but with not a man or horse to dispute its possession with him, he would have felt very uncomfortable, indeed, and would probably have moved over to the other side of the island at the first opportunity.

And so I am never lonely in No. 783. The old torn carpet, the little pine wash-stand, with a zig-zag crack running down one side as though it had split itself at one of our jokes; the very quilt, with a rip in the middle like a laughter-moved mouth convulsively stuffed full of cotton-all have compan. ionship for me. And when these fail me, I have only to gaze out of the little window-not upon the street below, for there I can merely see moving specks which I take to be men and women, but upon the range of house-tops, spread out miles below me. I gaze at the old bell-tower, and have strange thoughts about the man who watches there, and the queer life he may have led, and the curious things he must have seen; I look at the sugar-refinery, rising two or three stories above other roofs, and, somehow, it seems as though it has so risen in order to greet my hotel with friendly equality. I suffer my eyes to rove over the thousands of lower residences; and, like the Spanish author, seem to look through the roofs and upon the tenants within, speculating why and wherefore they are doing this and that, and generally taking a peculiar interest in all their actions. There may be some who would call this musing unprofitable, and would insist that it were better for me to be out in the world, driving ahead to some practical end, but I do not altogether believe so. I know that often, while peering out from aloft, good thoughts and resolutions somehow come into head-thoughts which, during the

my

labors of practical life, would have been driven at a distance; and, sometimes, as I rise from my contemplations, I feel that a certain peaceful calm has entered into my heart, making me, for the time, very happy, and very much disposed to become a better man.

One great pleasure which I have at my hotel is, the table d'hôte. Not that I care about my meals particularly; for I am rather heedless of what I eat, and frequently get throught a plateful of one thing, under the impression that I have been consuming something else. But I like to watch the people around me, to read their expressions, and speculate upon their occupations and designs.

There is my waiter; and I feel at times a little in awe of him, he is such a superior kind of negro. In the first place, he dresses rather better than I do, and I acknowledge, among other things, that I can never hope to equal the tie of his silk cravat. And, moreover, he is such a knowing, self-possessed fellow, with a peculiar dignity of manner, which, at rare intervals, he allows to subside into affability, and with a certain quiet vein of satire lurking in the corners of his eyes, as though he could read me through and through, and thoroughly analyze my pretensions, and knew for certain, that though I sit down and he stands behind, my business is worth less to me, in a pecuniary point of view, than his is to him, which might very well be. When I give him a quarter, as I occasionally do, to keep up my reputation, he receives it with a troubled kind of air, as though he fears lest I may not be able to afford it, and may be seriously crippling my resources by making a false show of affluence. When he hands me the card, and I run my eye down the printed list of French dishes, I can feel that he is grinning over my shoulder with the knowledge that, though I may pretend to understand it all, in reality I do not know one dish from another; and, as I despairingly select my customary beef and potatoes, I can almost hear his chuckle of inward satisfaction, at having foreseen the result from the first. And when at the head of a long file he brings in his share of the dessert, and, after a moment of expectant delay, drops upon the table, at the sound of the bell, first the righthand and then the left-hand dish, and, immediately recovering himself with a

Then there are the guests of my hotel-my guests, as it were. There are new ones every day; for people come and go in throngs. I watch their countenances and manners with true physiognomical zeal; for a study of the mind is one of my passions, and I like to believe that I can judge of the inner by the outward man. I am not generally very successful, however. The portly gentleman with white whiskers, whom I believed must certainly be an extensive slaveholder and plantation proprietor, I afterwards discovered to be an eminent anti-slavery Boston merchant. The little withered man with the gimlet eye and shabby coat, whom I set down for a miser, I detected in the act of giving a dollar to our waiter, who thanked him with a low bow, and triumphantly clinked it against the thin quarter which I had just bestowed upon him. gentleman with the straight back-bone, buttoned-up coat and black moustache, who bore the appearance of a French officer traveling upon furlough, I subsequently ascertained to be a clerk in a Cincinnati commission warehouse. Mistakes like these have occasionally impaired my confidence in my ability to read the human character; but, at other times, I manage to guess aright, and then feel better satisfied, and, upon the whole, I suppose I get on pretty well.

The

At times, I feel a little hurt that my guests-as by my pleasing fiction I consider them-treat me with such little respect and attention. They come and sit down complacently at my table, and never think of passing to me any of the compliments of the day. They open bottles of champagne and hock before my eyes, and never think of directing the waiter to fill my glass. They even criticise my viands to my face; and once, one of them coming in early, seized my chair and refused to give it up, though politely requested to do so. And it often cuts me to the heart to see the ingratitude of my waiter, who, if he sees a stranger with a manner indicative of bounteous largesses, will bestow all

his attentions in that quarter, and leave me to wait upon myself. But I have grown accustomed to this, and try to believe that I rather enjoy it. For, after all, as I reflect, my only desire being that of making my guests comfortable, it is far better that they should feel easy and at home in my presence, even at the expense of some little formalities of politeness.

It is seldom that I take any especial lasting interest in my guests. In this I differ from my friend, the bank-clerk, who sits beside me at table, and who, without any very definite idea of character, or any particular ability to analyze his own feelings, contrives, about once in three days, to form a lasting friendship with some strange gentleman, or else fall deeply in love with some strange lady. This idiosyncrasy upon his part is, however, extremely harmless in its effects; for it generally happens that the gentlemen, selected by him for his friendly advances, treat him with sublime contempt, mingled with some suspicion; while the ladies, for whom he condescends to entertain a tender passion, being principally those of a showy and grenadier style of beauty, and he being a small man, and so conscious of his inferiority that he never dares to address them-I doubt, whether they even notice his distant admiration, or even, in fact, see him at all. But I, on the contrary, calmly and resignedly see my guests come and go; and, driving them from my thoughts as soon as the black porter has dragged their trunks out upon the sidewalk, I bestow my thoughts upon their successors with great complacency.

With one exception, however. One day, just as the fish had been removed, I chanced to cast my eyes a little way down the table, and there saw a young lady, who instantly, and by a kind of sympathetic interest, fixed my attention. She was young, hardly sixteen, I should judge, had rather irregular features, and, moreover, was very simply dressed. As she was of rather diminutive size, my friend, the bank-clerk, would have seen nothing to admire about her; and, indeed, she was hardly one whom a person could have called beautiful. But there was something lively, and fresh, and piquant in her face, which interested me. Her whole style, too, was perfectly unaffected and unconstrained. I felt that she was one whose friendship

-whose acquaintance, even-would be worth more than that of all the highly dressed and decorously mannered young ladies and dames who usually lined the table. And after gazing at her for as long a time as I dared, without incurring the imputation of insolence, I turned away my eyes, with the rather loudly uttered exclamation :

"How charming!"

Then I was afraid that I had spoken too loudly, and I became confused. But no one had heard me speak, excepting my waiter, who, misunderstanding me, placed a dish of fromage à la Seringapatam before me. Not knowing its nature, I attempted to cut it with a spoon instead of a knife; at which I became conscious that my genteel waiter must have smiled in pity for my inexperience, and that made me yet more confused. But, just then, my friend the bank-clerk came to my relief.

"What is the matter with you?" he

said.

"Look," said I, "at that young lady on the other side--the third one from the old parrot in the turban. What do you think of her?"

Hum!" said he, stealthily casting his eyes in the direction indicated. "Tolerably fair. But I like the one on the other side best. She is larger, and is finer dressed."

The one to whom he referred was a lady about five feet eight inches in height, and with a generally enormous development of muscle. She wore a spangled head-dress, a gold chain, and three heavy bracelets. Of course, after such a remark, I could have nothing further to do with my friend, but contented myself with silent observation of my fair incognito, to whom, in a quiet and unimpassioned sort of way, I felt myself more and more irresistibly attracted. But, as for being ever able even to speak to her, that was a matter which I considered perfectly hopeless. There was, of course, no one of my friends who could present me; and though, for an instant, I contemplated scraping an introduction through her father, who sat at her right hand, and with whom I might possibly manage to form an acquaintance, I gave it up as an insane idea as soon as I looked upon him and applied my principles of physiognomical science to an elucidation of his character. For he seemed to be the very incarnation of jealous ferocity

having short, bristly hair which stuck up straight as a comb; a mouth drawn down at the corners; thick whiskers, which curled up round his mouth with a kind of savage vindictiveness; and an eye which blazed like a coal. In fact, he looked like a man who would always be upon the watch for insults; who would strongly resent a casual word from me in the reading-room; and, if he caught me speaking to his daughter, would consider it a matter to be atoned for by blood. The more I looked at him, the more hopeless the case seemed, and it was only at long intervals that I dared to steal a single sly glance at the young lady. Once I thought that the old gentleman had caught me at it; for his eye met mine with such an intensity of indignant rancor, that I fully expected he would let fly the plate of almonds at me across the table. In the occurrence of such an event, I made up my mind to cast myself upon my waiter for protection.

"Who are they?" I inquired, after dinner, of the clerk at the office.

66

"Colonel Bartillian and daughter," was the answer. From Georgiabound for the Springs-comes every year-owns three plantations and twelve hundred darkeys."

The next day I found that Colonel Bartillian and his daughter had departed, and gradually the remembrance of them faded away from my mind. Occasionally I reflected vaguely upon the pleasant, soul-lit face of the young girl; and once I woke up from sleep in a terrible fright, having dreamed that at table I had offered her the plate of potatoes, upon which her father, with his front hair and whiskers starting up straighter and his eyes glaring more dreadfully than ever, had called in all his twelve hundred negroes to dispatch me. as weeks passed on, my reveries and dreams became less and less frequent, and finally ceased; and I should soon have forgotten all about the strangers, were it not that the next summer, at about the same week in June, they suddenly reappeared and took their places at the very same part of the table.

But