At a Hotel in Japan

1895

EXTRACT FROM AN INTERESTING DESCRIPTION BY A TRAVELER.

In No Respect Does the Japanese Inn Resemble the American Brand — Tea That Is Tea and No Mistake — A Bath That May Become a Boil.

A Japanese hotel is built on the maze principle. Rarely is it more than a story and a half in height, as befits a house which, in this seismic land, must sometimes dance on a boiling kettle, but it spreads over a great deal of ground and has as many passageways as a gopher warren. A business man's case of pigeonholes laid flat on its face would describe the ground plan very well. Outside the hotel presents, especially at night, an implacable front. The lower facade is a solid wall of cement, with a small doorway closed by a sliding panel, and the oblong aperture above is so crisscrossed with gratings as to give it the look of a rural lockup or a ship's brig.

The manager of the hotel is a humble and obsequious person, and so is his chief clerk. By his manner or costume neither is to be distinguished from the chef or the waiter. When a guest enters, there is no imposing figure at the desk to swing a register about, dip a pen in ink and inquire if the gentleman has any baggage to be sent up. Instead is a gowned, diminutive oriental, who bows until his body has taken the attitude of a carpenter's square standing on end, and about him is a staff which drops to its knees and touches its collective forehead to the floor. The guest is then invited, in phrases that are full of apology, to remove his shoes. Having done this and being filled with thankfulness that his socks have not worn through, he is bowed into a second room and then into a third and perhaps into a fourth, each apartment but little larger than a steamship's stateroom, its walls made of sliding partitions, with oiled paper windows, and its floor covered with small squares of matting, underlaid with soft cloth and tacked down. One of these cubby holes is assigned to him for a sleeping and living apartment.

Very likely one finds it cold, for Japan, in spite of its gulf stream, is too near Siberia to escape the rigors of the northern winter. The guest looks about for a warm corner, but there is no steam radiator, no stove, no fireplace. He claps his hands for a servant, and with his phrasebook in hand demands a fire. Again the shuffling footfall and the young woman with the oblique glance. This time she brings a brass brazier filled with burning charcoal. She places this on the floor, pokes the fire with two iron sticks, which look like knitting needles, giggles as before, and in the lowest and sweetest of flute tones says, "Cha?"

"Cha," which has a sound corresponding with "hah," is the first word one should learn in Japan. It means tea, and tea is as much the national beverage here as beer is in Germany or ice water in the United States.

So the guest has cha. The maid, already seated on the floor, takes a dainty china cup without a handle, and placing it on a salver fills it with an unsweetened, colorless liquid, which tastes as much unlike the tea of commerce as it does unlike the vichy of a soda fountain. This is tea indeed — tea that is fit for the daimio or the mandarins — nay, for royalty itself; tea that the Japanese are wise enough to keep at home, letting the western barbarians pay their yellow gold for the acrid stuff that stains one's vitals black.

When cha has been drunk, the proprietor attends. He falls on his knees and wishes to know "if gentlemans" — the generic name of the fair skinned species in native hotel vocabulary — will take a bath. At last there is something customary and familiar about this hotel. By all means a bath.

The proprietor leads, walking sidewise, through devious passages which have the narrowest of doors and the lowest of ceilings and finally opens the side of a small room, In which hangs horizontally a bamboo rod. This rod is a rack for one's clothes. In the next room is the bath. Fortunate is the man who has not prepared himself to expect a porcelain tub, a tiled floor, a shower and a corner washstand with nickel plated fittings, for he will not find them. Instead, there is a great slab of rock to stand on and an upright barrel, resting upon what looks like a block of granite, into which one is at liberty to climb and submerge himself.

The barrel is nearly full of water, which almost bubbles with heat. There is no faucet from which to turn on a cold douche, but a pair of great, clumsy, wooden buckets, filled with well water, are near by, and the guest, in the absence of a derrick, is privileged to lift them himself and turn them into his bath.

With the bath properly tempered the barrel is very comfortable indeed. There are no exposed surfaces below the bather's neck to catch the chill of the surrounding air and gather goose pimples. One sits down luxuriously, grows cheerful in the all pervading warmth and even lights a cigarette and sees visions of home in the curling smoke. But beware! It is not long before the bather begins to suspect that he is being parboiled. Was the water as hot as this when he got into it? Hark! Is that the crackle of a fagot? Is that a chimney that comes up by the barrel and disappears through the ceiling? Heavens, the stone foundation of the bath is merely a stove, a furnace, in which is the hottest fire that can be made in a space four feet square! Your bath is what you might got at home if you should crawl into the kitchen boiler an hour before dinner time. — Cor. San Francisco Chronicle.

Broadway Glacier

1895

A FAMOUS OLD HOTEL AND THEATER SUCCUMB TO IT.

Memories of the Glorious Career of the Old Metropolitan and Niblo's Garden. Reminiscences That Will Interest Others Besides New Yorkers.

Thirty years ago the Metropolitan hotel was the focus of the town. The gilded youth went there for late suppers. The most noted politicians of the Tweed ring poured out champagne there. Its birds were always well cooked, its steaks were marrowed to a turn, its oysters had the call, and its whisky was famous.

It was the plaza for the actors until long after the war. They stood in clusters all round its steps and held council in its vestibule, for all the noted chophouses were in the neighborhood.

Round the corner, in Houston street, were the House of Lords and Clifton's, and up on the other end of the block was the Revere House. From that corner down you could meet on a pleasant day all the famous actors in town — E. L. Davenport, Tom Placide, Burton, Dion Boucicault, James W. Wallack, Charles Fisher, John Brougham, Rufus Blake and a double score of others. If any of them got up as far as the Metropolitan Opera House, it was behind a fast team, and they found themselves in the country.

When the Metropolitan was opened in 1852, it was the town talk. It was inaugurated with a stupendous banquet. Stephen A. Douglas and Tom Benton and Sam Houston were there. Voluminous descriptions of the hotel appeared in the newspapers of that date. People stood in crowds and looked up at it from the other side of the street. It was thought by conservative people to be a most unwarranted piece of extravagance. But the Metropolitan became at once one of the most popular hotels in the city. And its complement of 1,000 guests did not fall off while the Lelands had charge of it.

Before and during the war it was customary for the reporters to go to the Metropolitan every night to get the news. It was jammed with people on the night of the cable celebration and on the day that Sumter was fired on. There was, in fact, no such center above it on Broadway, and its walls must have rung with the voices of many great captains and celebrated beauties.

There are people in New York who can remember when Niblo had a garden there. There are many more who can remember the first theater which went by the name of the garden, and how the American institute was wont to hold its fairs there, and the original Christy minstrels, before they got into Mechanics' hall, really caught the small town there, and how for several seasons the concert hall was the resort of our small musical population.

Then later the theater spread out into a great auditorium, and Mr. A. T. Stewart bought the property and had a private box connected with a parlor, and finally came Jarrett and Palmer to take the management, and then bloomed upon the world the "Black Crook" and the "White Fawn," spectacles whose like had never been seen, and which rolled up fortunes for everybody connected with them.

But at this time the theater was in the full swing of popular success. The enormous success of the "Black Crook" had secured all the commercial visitors in town. It was denounced by the pulpit, but never waned in attractiveness for years. Agents were kept in Europe to snap up every specialty they could find, and such was the pliability and capacity of the performance that it swallowed up everything, from a performing goat to a prima ballerina assoluta.

Bonfanti was then in her prime and became the rage of the town. Pauline Markham was in full girth of glory and led the Amazons.

If some one will lay hold of the still virile beard of the venerable Commodore Tooker, he will reminisce for an hour on the palmy days of Niblo's. All the historic Thespians of the pave will tell of the days of William Wheatley and the production of the "Duke's Motto," a play which made the most extraordinary kind of a hit, and how after that Forrest came with the "Broker of Bogota," one of the best original American dramas of its era.

When Jarrett and Palmer took hold of Niblo's Garden, a change came over the house. Then opened the era of Terpsichore, and for years the place was given over to a voluptuous orgie of bacchantes and spectacle. There were long rows of the handsomest women in the world in the corridors on Tuesday mornings to draw their salary.

After the "Black Crook" wore itself out there were spasmodic efforts to call back the old dramatic prestige of the house. Charles Fechter made his American debut there, playing Hamlet in a blond wig and failing to please the public. It was there that Boucicault brought his "Formosa" from London after declaring that he was going to open "a new path for the drama through the sewers," and the play was damned on the first night.

The Metropolitan has succumbed to the inevitable. Broadway is a glacier, not a rock. It moves slowly north with all its gayety, its groups, its centers. Everything historic melts and vanishes. Every old stager has marked the shifting of the centers. Thirty years ago the focus of Vanity Fair was there between Houston and Prince streets. When Rachel came to this country, she got no higher than Houston street. And when the war was over the meeting place of all the lions, the swells, the flaneurs, was between the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan.

Those blocks thundered and palpitated with the life that has gone up to Thirty-ninth street. First the crowd jumped to Union square, then it went to the Fifth Avenue hotel, then to the Hoffman House, then to the Coleman, then to the Grand, then to — well, you will have to take a cable car to find it now. — Nym Crinkle in New York World.

The Ketchaboneck House Burned

New York, 1895

The Ketchaboneck house at Westhampton, one of the largest summer hotels at the beach was destroyed by fire at three o'clock Sunday morning. The family of Mr. Raynor barely escaped with their lives. Nothing was saved, not even sufficient clothing to keep them warm. The hotel could accommodate about 100 guests. The building and furniture were insured for $10,000.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 18, 1895, unknown page number.

Gets $500 for Finding Gems

1916

Woman Rewards Hotel Maid Who Returns Jewels.

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — The recovery of $50,000 worth of gems lost by Mrs. Lee Meriwether of St. Louis in the William Penn Hotel in this city increased the bank account of Miss Margaret Casey of Bloomfield by $500.

The girl, employed as a maid in the hotel, found the jewels in the bed occupied by Mrs. Meriwether. On turning them over to their owner she received the $500 as a reward for her honesty.

Mrs. Meriwether was speeding toward Cleveland when she discovered her jewels were missing. The train was stopped and she disembarked, hired an automobile and hurried back to the hotel. Much to her astonishment and relief, she found the jewels awaiting her in the hotel office.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.

"Lost" Gems Are Recovered

1916

Package of Valuables Turns Up in St. Paul Postoffice.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota — A few days ago a St. Paul woman gave a Chicago hotel clerk an envelope containing jewels valued at $1,500, $200 in currency and a $50 draft to be placed in the hotel safe over night. The contents of the envelope have now been returned to the woman by Otto Raths, St. Paul postmaster.

When the valuables were called for at the Chicago hotel they could not be found. The clerk to whom they had been given had started on a two-weeks vacation. The woman stormed at the hotel management but didn't get any trace of her valuables. When she asked for her bill she found on it an item for "postage 4 cents."

The clerk had affixed the stamps and the valuables had been sent to St. Paul. The envelope was badly torn on its arrival here and postal clerks puzzled over the strange manner of shipping valuables until the woman appeared, claimed the shipment and explained its cause. Why they were sent here has not been explained.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 11.

Boats Are Hotels

1920

Floating Hostelries Relieve New York Housing Conditions

ALBANY, N. Y. — Floating hotels were put in operation here to relieve the housing conditions, and particularly the congestion which has marked Albany hotels the last two years.

Two of the largest night line steamers plying the Hudson River, after having had their light and water systems hooked up to the municipal supply here, were opened to the public as floating hotels and ready for business.

Each of the boats has accommodations for 400 guests, and on each meals will be served and hotel service maintained. It is believed this is the first time in the history of the country that boats, compelled to cease operations by freezing of a river, have been utilized as hotels.

Hotel Clerks' "Kittie"

1910

Box Into Which Excess Change Is Dropped to Make Up Possible Shortages

"The 'kittie' is the latest thing for the protection of hotel clerks," said John Rohman, chief clerk at the Old Inn.

"The 'kittie,'" he continued, "is a strong box with a slit in the lid in which we drop any excess change that comes along.

"For instance, if a guest overpays his bill and gets away before the mistake is discovered, we drop the extra money into the 'kittie,' which is never opened until some of the clerks find themselves short. The other day one of our boys came up two dollars ahead in his accounts. One of the guests had evidently paid two dollars more than he should in settling his bill. There was no way to locate the guest, and the two dollars went into the 'kittie.' A day or two later I came up two dollars short, so I went into the 'kittie' and got out the two dollars.

"The management of every hotel makes the clerk or cashier stand for any shortage of the cash drawer that occurs on the particular clerk's watch. The 'kittie' is an invention of the clerks at the French Lick hotel, but many hotels have adopted the plan." — Louisville Times.

Telephone in the Woods

1905

"I've been reading," remarked a citizen who spends five months of every year in the woods, "that the telephone is a great convenience in the wilderness. The Electrical Review says that throughout the forests, from St. John to Vancouver, the telephone brings the lumber camps into touch with one another, letters are read to lumbermen snowed in 50 or 300 miles from civilization and the human side of life is made warmer and more vivid by this means of communication.

"A telephone does heat up considerably anywhere, especially when it won't work; but I'm inclined to think a telephone in the wilderness is a great nuisance instead of a great convenience. What an angler, hunter or botanist wants of one of the things is more than I can understand. They've got the Adirondacks fixed so that there's a push button in every other tree, and if you stub your toe a waiter'll pop out of the bushes with a champagne cocktail or a telegram. That's all right, perhaps, but why not stay in the Waldorf?

"A telephone in the woods is a good thing for game, though. We had our cabin wired to a village down at the end of the railroad one summer. Never again for me. I'd be dangling for trout. 'John, John,' would come my wife's voice, resounding through the aisles of pine and hemlock. 'What?' I'd say, mad clean through. 'Your Boston brokers want to talk with you a minute.' Or I'd be almost within range of a deer and that same 'John' would come floating on the air from the shanty. 'What?' I'd have to call back, and the deer'd be in the next county. 'New York's waiting; long distance,' the servant would holler. "Line's held open for you.' The only trout I got that season was a tame one I bought of a man who fattens 'em for market, and the only thing I shot was the ace of spades. I tacked it up the last day and blazed at it for spite. And now," he concluded, "when I go into the woods the central office can't find me with a guide and a brass band." — Providence Journal.

Building Old As U. P. Road

1915

Its Proprietor Still Lives, a Victim of Generosity and Poverty

LARAMIE, Wyo., Dec. 16. — In the ordinary city which began no further back than 1868 the oldest building would be of little consequence, but in a city in the West, whose existence dates from May 9 of that year, when the Union Pacific Railroad laid its first rails into and thru the townsite, the oldest house seems very old indeed to the residents and to the people generally.

Laramie's oldest building today is a long two-story building which was built by Patrick Doran, who is living here at present, as a hotel, and in which hundreds of transient and regular boarders were accommodated for years.

Doran had his own way of keeping books. He chalked the accounts on the inner side of the front door. If a customer disputed the bill, mine host would go to the door, carefully erase the score and tel1 the dissatisfied customer that they would start all over again.

The old building is of logs, cut in the mountains several miles southwest of the city and floated down the Laramie River. The building is now used for a blacksmith shop.

In the early days of the frontier hotel Mr. Doran would charge a dollar a meal from those who could pay a dollar and lesser sums from those who could not afford to pay. No man ever went away hungry that had any money at all, and Mr. Doran would never take the man's last cent, so that one can imagine the large number of accounts the inward side of that door used to carry. Doran himself was quite wealthy at one time, but accepts charity from the county.

Deputy Sheriff Is Peeved At Pink Pajamas

1915

Does Not Appreciate Thoughtfulness of Hotel Proprietor for Late Transients

Oakland, Cal. — Trouble reigned in the Hotel Crellin — and all because of a pair of pink pajamas. If Proprietor Louis Aber hadn't invented a new way to accommodate transient guests, or if he had made the pajamas blue or green, perhaps all would have been well — but Edward Squires, deputy sheriff from Nevada, will not wear 'em pink, that's final!

Aber had started a new scheme. Many belated dwellers in the outskirts of Oakland had appeared at his hotel, after missing their last cars, for night accommodations. Aber thought that it would be a clever concession to provide them with all the comforts of home — so he ordered that pajamas be furnished along with pillow cases and the rest of a hotel room's adornment.

Squires appeared to announce that he had missed a last boat to San Francisco. He wanted a room. Dash Katona, chief clerk, showed him to a room and left.

A few moments later the Nevada sheriff appeared in the office, red and angry, and with a pair of pink pajamas suspended scornfully from thumb and finger.

"Say," demanded the deputy sheriff, "isn't it bad enough to put me in another man's room, without putting me in a room with a pair of pink silk nightpants? I'm sore!"

The matter was explained, and the sheriff returned mollified, to sleep. But he didn't wear the pajamas!

To Open 5-Cent Hotel

1914

Bed and Bath For That Sum is Philanthropy of Rufus F. Dawes

Chicago, Jan. 2. — Hope for the man with a few nickels will take a tangible form when the Rufus F. Dawes hotel opens.

A bed and a bath for a nickel, soup for two cents, coffee at the same price, rolls for one cent each and pie for three cents are the features which promise to make the Dawes hotel popular from its start.

Patrons are required to take a bath. They are furnished with clean clothes. Beds and all other appliances are of the most sanitary pattern.

For the particular guest who can afford the extra expense there are private rooms. These cost ten cents a night. A compulsory free bath is attached to the rental of these rooms.

Horse Aged 41 Years Dies

1920

Was Thoroughbred Animal Known as John Paul Jones

MIDDLEBURY, Vermont — John Paul Jones, full-blooded Morgan horse, driven for years by Frank R. Stone, known as one of the oldest-in-service hotel porters in the country, is dead. Mr. Stone found John Paul dead in his stable.

The horse was in his 42nd year, according to his owner, and up to the time of his death seemed in south health, eating cracked corn and hay as well as any young horse.

He had been used in drawing baggage between the Middlebury depot and the Addison House, where Mr. Stone had been employed since 1866.


Prison if He Weds Within Two Years

1920

LOS ANGELES — Gordon D. Mills, who, according to Prohibition Officer Dodds' report, stole 146,519 nickels, 6,443 dimes and 796 quarters from telephone booths, will be on probation for two years, provided he does not marry Mrs. Florence McAllister or any other woman during that time. Mrs. McAllister said he thought Mills honest and that he was tempted and could not be blamed.

Concerning Beds, Mattresses in Days of Old

1874

During all ages, from the earliest times, men have displayed their invention in designing beds which should gratify their natural love for comfort, for elegance, and for luxury. In the prehistoric times the dwellers in the caves most probably followed the suggestion given them by the animals which they drove out from their rocky dens, in this early stage of the "struggle for existence," and made their beds of leaves. From this condition to providing skins for the coverings of their couches, was a great advance, and with their increasing ability to dominate their surrounding conditions, and provide the materials for gratifying their natural as well as artificial wants, this step was but the first in a long course of invention and improvement applied to beds.

Among the Romans and the Greeks, as well as the other nations of antiquity, such an appliance as a mattress was unknown. They made their beds upon couches of wood, which were covered with skins, furs, woolen and other stuffs. Their luxury in beds consisted only in using more expensive coverings, replacing a sheep's skin by a tiger's or substituting for a rough woolen blanket one of finer texture, or a shawl of silk embroidered in gold and silver thread. These improvements, or those consisting in replacing the wooden bench which formed their support with one of bronze, or even of gold or silver, was really only a display of greater wealth, but could not be considered in these days an advance towards securing the advantages of a comfortable, luxurious, and healthy bed.

In the early period of modern history, beds were almost universally, in Europe, nothing but bundles of straw. As late in England as the times of Queen Elizabeth, when no carpets were used, and the floor was strewn with rushes, the beds were hardly anything better, and a wooden bench, or any rude framework which lifted the bed above the floor, was a luxury. Erasmus, in his letters, describes the social condition of the people during the reign of Henry VIII, and was disgusted at the state of the floors. The rushes, he says, were so seldom changed, and became so damp, that the feet were constantly kept wet, and thence colds and consumption were quite common.

In the dining-rooms, he speaks of the filth collected on the floor among the rushes; the bits of meat and bones thrown to the dogs, who fought around the guests' legs for them; the beer and wine emptied upon the floor; the slices of bread, used as plates for eating their meat on, and then thrown aside, altogether giving us no very high conception of the neatness and fine breeding of the time.

From Delaroche's fine picture of "The Death of Queen Elizabeth," an accurate idea can be gained of the beds of royalty at this period, and consequently those of the common people can be imagined. By a careful study of the times, and from all the contemporary evidence bearing upon this point, Delaroche was enabled to reproduce the scene with a truthful accuracy of detail. The queen is reposing upon a bed formed by spreading cloths upon the floor. She is covered with richly embroidered spreads of velvet, bordered with golden fringe. The moment chosen is when she is upbraiding the Countess of Nottingham for keeping back the ring Essex had sent to his royal mistress just before his execution. The queen herself is gorgeously attired, as was her constant custom, but the comparison between the brilliant coverings of the bed and its position, one which now would be considered as in the dirt, affords an admirable picture of the partial civilization of the times, with its splendor of display and its want of the simplest decencies of the present.

Mattresses were first made of straw or wool, then moss came to be used, and feathers, and finally curled hair. The trouble with all mattresses of these materials is, that they become by use matted and hard, and have to be remade. Besides, too, all of these materials have a greater or a less tendency to retain the bodily exhalations, and in all public places, such as hotels, hospitals, and other institutions where the beds are used in turn by a number of different persons, the danger of contagion, and the difficulty in any case of keeping the beds hygienically clean and pure, according to the demands of the present medical standard, is very great, if not impossible.

Rich Girl Sued for $150,000 — Stole Woman's Astrologer Husband

1909

RICH GIRL SUED FOR $150,000

Wife of Astrologer Says His Love Was Stolen.

FORGAVE HUSBAND ONCE.

Mrs. Marshall Clark Tells Graphic Story of Seeing Rival Run Out of Mr. Clark's Private Office and of Her Visit Later to Miss Gazzam, Who, She Says, Declared the Man Was Her "Affinity in Spirit, Soul and Body."

New York, Oct. 4.— Mrs. Marshall Clark of Chicago, a handsome brunette of thirty-five years, who has brought suit for $150,000 damages against Miss Antoinette Elizabeth Gazzam, possessor of a fortune of $3,500,000 and a palatial home at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, charging the young woman with alienating the affections of her husband, an astrologer known as "Professor Niblo," has come to New York to prosecute her claim against the heiress.

"I met Dr. Clark in Chicago," Mrs. Clark said. "We were married in New York on March 24, 1903, by the Rev. Dr. Anderson, a Methodist Episcopal minister. At that time Mr. Clark was conducting a real estate business in this city.

"We had an ideal married life until Miss Gazzam and her millions appeared. We traveled much. I was my husband's business partner and confidential adviser as well as his wife.

Consulted Him on Astrology.

"We were living in Los Angeles in April last when Miss Gazzam arrived in that city. She evidently had read Mr. Clark's advertisements about astrology, and she consulted him. They very soon were having frequent meetings. Indeed, Miss Gazzam engaged the rose parlor at the fashionable Lankershim hotel, in Los Angeles, in which to entertain him.

"On April 29 I called at my husband's office, and, not hearing any sound in his inner office, I opened the door and entered. As I did so I was amazed to see Miss Gazzam spring past me and run out of the office.

"I began screaming, and my husband ran to his desk and took from the drawer a revolver, which he pointed at me, threatening to shoot me if I did not stop making a noise.

She Forgave Him That Time.

"Although I forgave my husband for the presence of the woman and for his attack on me, I soon found out that this mysterious new friend was calling upon him every day and he upon her. She called upon him five times one day and telephoned him twenty times. I sought the advice of counsel and was told to see if I could have a personal conversation with Miss Gazzam. So on May 24 last I went to her apartments, then in the Zelda hotel She met me at the door.

" 'Do you know that Marshall Clark is my husband?' I asked.

" 'Yes, I know all about you,' she said.

"Then I asked her why she was acting in this manner. She replied:

" 'Because Mr. Clark is my affinity in spirit, soul and body.'

"I began to cry and told her I was talking to her in heart to heart fashion. I said: 'Don't you know these tears are tears of blood? My heart is breaking.'

Told to Get Out of Their Way.

" 'I don't care for your tears of blood or your breaking heart,' she retorted. 'There is only one thing for you to do, and that is to get out of our way. I have always had what I wanted, and I want this man and am going to have him, no matter what it costs you or anyone else.'

"I tried to continue the interview, but she gave me a violent push that nearly knocked me out of the window, which was on the fourth floor.

"Turning upon her, I screamed: 'Are you trying to take my life? You have already taken my husband and ruined my home!'

"At this she grabbed my lace coat and almost tore it from my back. When I came to myself I was out in a hallway of the hotel, my hair down my back, my silk coat torn to shreds and blood streaming down my face.

"I got out a warrant charging her with assault and battery, but before it was served she had disappeared. I learned later that she had moved to the Hotel Pepper, where she registered as Mrs. S. W. Moore. At the time she also registered at the Westlake hotel as Miss Mazzag of Pennsylvania.

"I learned then that my husband visited her every evening. He posed as a physician. When he called upon her he worse a false mustache."

—Orange County Times-Press, Middletown, NY, Oct. 5, 1909, p. 9.

Half Pound Baby Gets Along Nicely

1920

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Mr. and Mrs. Louis Ouisett are proud of being the parents of the littlest baby in New York. She is Jeanne Ouisett, and when she and her twin brother, Louis, were born Feb. 24 she weighed just under half a pound. Louis was bigger, tipping the scale at three-quarters of a pound, but he lacked the vitality of his sister and died a few hours after birth.

At the Bellevue Hospital the doctor and nurses believe the baby will live.



N.Y. Beds Too Short to Fit Tallest Yank

Brooklyn Pal Finally Leads Him to a "Rigged-Up" Couch

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Being the tallest man of the A. E. F. is something to be proud of, but it has its disadvantages when one goes looking for a place to sleep in this city.

Robert Redington of Pittston, Pa., former sergeant major in the 311th Artillery band, 79th Division, who is 6 feet 7, made the discovery on a recent night.

He finally appealed to Secretary James F. Drum at the K. of C. employment hut in Longacre square, who took Redington to his home in Brooklyn and managed to rig up a bed so his feet didn't stick out over the footboard.

Use of Typewriter Still In Its Infancy, Will Definitely Grow

1901

WRITING BY MACHINE

EMPLOYMENT OF TYPEWRITER YET IN ITS INFANCY.

Use Will Increase Until Every Hotel Will Provide Them for Guests, and All Business Men Will Use Them Themselves, Not Depending Upon Others.

Bicycling was a fad, but typewriting is a fact. The typewriter it, he, or she — is in the same class as the telephone, telegraph, and linotype. As to usefulness and universality, typewriting is in its infancy. Thus far it is used only by those who cannot get along without it. The business man puts in a writing machine as a luxury, and regards it as expense. A young woman who learns to use a typewriter feels called upon to explain that she may have to earn her living, and she can equip herself more quickly in this way than in any other. A superintendent or principal who advocates the introduction of typewriting into the schools feels obliged to prove that it is due those who may have to earn a living.

The attitude of business men and school people toward typewriting must change entirely, and the time for such change is already here. Where one writing machine is used now there will be ten in use in the near future. The only trouble up to this time has been that business men, superintendents, and principals rarely use the machine personally and advantageously. The typewriter is a servant, a helper, doing what the proprietor would have it understood that he is above doing, whereas the difficulty is that he cannot do it.

As a Yankee, I venture the guess that in the not-distant future the ablest men and women in home and office, in hotel and train will use the machine. To-day, away from home, if one wishes typewriting, he pays a dollar an hour or more for the service, but soon every first-class hotel will have all the writing machines which their patronage requires in the writing room and free to all guests. Already every first-class new hotel has a long-distance telephone in each room and a man has its use at any hour of day or night at the same rate that he would pay if he went out and sought a "pay station." In the same way one will be able to say when he registers at any first-class hotel, "I would like a room with a writing machine." At first he might have to pay fifty cents a day extra, as he does for a room with bath and lavatory appointments, but that will soon pass away, as the extra charge for the bath is going. Already it is appreciated that a bath is as important as a washbowl, and so the necessity of the writing machine will be early acknowledged.

In a word, the future of typewriting is with the schools. Teach it as universally as you teach penmanship, not for the sake of the girls who are to be typewriters, but for the greater advantage of the boys and girls who are to be the leaders in social, business, and professional life; not for the purpose of helping a poor girl to be independent, but for making rich and poor alike independent. The time has come for a universal and emphatic demand for the writing machine in every upper grade of the grammar school, and in every high school, academy, seminary, college, and university. — A. E. Winship, in Normal Instructor.

Men Gloomy at Breakfast, Waiter Says

1903

"Our business wouldn't be so disagreeable if we didn't have to serve breakfast to men," said a waiter in one of the better cafes one morning last week. "See that fellow over there? Well, naturally he's one of the best fellows that eats here, and at dinner he is a prince and never growls at anything, but at breakfast he always has a kick coming.

"It's the same way with nearly all men. They act as if they had got out of bed backward. In the morning they are nearly all of them cross, hard to please.

"It isn't the same with women. The reverse is true of them. If they find fault at all it is generally at dinner. Most women are as sweet-tempered in the morning as in the evening. If the men were as consistent we would not have so hard a time of it."

Congressman Seeks Apartment at Swellest Hotel

1903

The salary of a member of congress is $416.66 2-3 a month. "Uncle Joe" Cannon, of Illinois, when it became apparent that he would be the next speaker of the house, relates the Baltimore Herald, thought it would be a good idea to move from his present comfortable but rather modest apartments to where "a little more dog," as he expressed it, "was put on." He went to the swellest hotel in town and asked to be shown some rooms. The gentlemanly clerk conducted him to the upper regions and unfolded to his vision a handsome suite.

"They look rather likely," said Mr. Cannon, "how much are they?"

"Four hundred dollars," was the reply.

"A year," persisted the chairman of the appropriations committee, who likes to be definite where figures are concerned.

"Oh, no, sir; $400 a month," explained the clerk.

Mr. Cannon appeared lost in reverie for a few moments. The clerk shifted meanwhile from one foot to another, and finally ventured: "What's the matter, Mr. Cannon?"

"Oh, nothing," said Uncle Joe, as he came back to life; "I'm just thinking."

"About what, Mr. Cannon?"

"What I'd do with the other $16.66 2-3."

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 4, 1903, page 5.

Wife Serving in Hotel After Husband Left Without Paying

1901

Wife Shoulders the Burden

Waterloo, Dec. 28.—A man registering at one of the hotels as Dr. L. D. Caswell of La Crosse. Wis., has departed from the city and his whereabouts are unknown. His wife, who was left without funds, has assumed the role of a servant girl in the hotel in order to meet the board bill. The doctor advertised extensively as a specialist, catarrh being his specialty.


Passed Forged Checks

Adair, Dec. 28—A stranger passed four forged checks of $9 each on the business men of Adair, claiming to be a farm hand working for a rich stock man near town and receiving the checks in payments. His description is: About 6 feet tall; weight, about 165 pounds; smooth, pale face; light brown hair; age, about 25 years; extra smooth hands; wore a dark ulster, light colored neck scarf, fedora hat; had the appearance of being an indoor worker.


Struck With Coal Shovel

Muscatine, Dec. 28.—Walter Kaiser, by his next friend, R. J. Kaiser, has begun a damage suit against M. O. Stanwood, defendant. Walter Kaiser is a minor of the age of 12 years, who sues by his next friend, R. J. Kaiser, and for cause of action against the defendant states that Stanwood struck him with a coal shovel, severely cutting his face. He wants $5,000 damages.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, December 29, 1901, page 3.

Hotel Clerk Charged as Bigamist

1903

HOTEL CLERK IS A BIGAMIST

Boy Cook Arrested for Having One Wife Too Many.

Marshalltown, March 2.—A young man named Roy Cook, formerly night cleric at the Pilgrim hotel here, was arrested on the charge of bigamy. The charge was preferred by a woman who claims to be his first wife and who is now living in Sioux City. She claims she was married to Cook in Sioux City in May, 1901. He acknowledges the truth of the claim, but says he has not lived with the woman for some time and that he believed when he married his second wife that he had been legally divorced.

The second wife of Cook was a young widow named Clara Thompson, She is a daughter of John Swift of this city. She was a clerk at the cigar stand in the Pilgrim hotel when Cook met her and they have been married since Oct. 27, 1902. She declared her faith in her husband this afternoon, after he was arrested and said she was sure he had not done wrong in marrying her, that he fully believed he had been divorced from the first wife.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 3, 1903, page 2.