It is he who manages the hotel, receives
travellers, and arranges for their well-being. He is a handsome
fellow, with a fresh complexion, heavy moustache, and one lock of hair
artificially arranged on his forehead. He is perfectly conscious of
his own good looks, and wears rings on both his hands. Nature has
endowed him with a sonorous baritone voice, the notes of which,
whether sharp or melodious, he is careful in expressing, because
he is charmed with his art, and has an idea that it is fearfully
egotistical to conceal such treasures. One note especially he never
fails to utter distinctly, and that is the last--the note of payment.
"Sometimes he allows himself to become so absorbed in his art that he
forgets the presence in the hotel of tired travellers, and disturbs
their slumbers by loud roulades and cadences; or perhaps he is asked to
fetch a bottle of beer, he stops on the way to the cellar to perfect
the harmony of a scale, and does not return till the patience of the
customer is exhausted. But who would have the heart to complain of such
small grievances when the love of song is stronger than any other?"
I had no such fortune in Holland. No hotel proprietor rhymed for me,
no waiter sang. My chief friends were rather the hotel porters,
of whom I recall in particular two--the paternal colossus at the
Amstel in Amsterdam, who might have sat for the Creator to an old
master--urbane, efficient, a storehouse of good counsel; and the plump
and wide cynic into whose capable and kindly hands one falls at the
Oude Doelen at The Hague, that shrewd and humorous reader of men and
Americans.
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