Booking office

“ Near the café is a post-office box, and hanging hard by are the weather bulletins of the day. A ladies’ waiting-room occupies a portion of the hall on the booking-office side. The place is lighted with electric lamps, which occasionally [266] fiz and splutter, and once in a while go out altogether. Nobody pays any attention to this. Everybody is used to the eccentricities of the new and beautiful light.
Obtaining permission to pass the ticket portals, I reach the platform, where I am to find the station-master. The outlook here reminds me of the high-level station of the Crystal Palace. ”

“ At the English stations the place where the tickets are bought is called the booking office. [Pg 55] It is necessary to procure tickets, or you cannot commence the journey; for it is not customary, as in America, to allow the passengers the privilege, when they desire it, of paying in the cars.
"Do you know where the booking office is, Mr. George?" said Waldron.
"No," said Mr. George, "but if you look about you will find it."
So Waldron and Rollo ran off to find the office. It was down stairs. Before they came back with the tickets the train was gone.
"It is no matter," said Mr. George. ”

“ To an Englishman who has not travelled in the States and become familiar with the methods employed there by business men, it seems odd that anyone should chaffer with the clerk at a ticket-office. What would an English booking-clerk say if he were asked about the fare to some place, and, on replying £1, received the rejoinder, "I'll give you 15s?" He would think the man a joker of a very feeble description. ”

“ No fixed or standard type could be adopted for all cases. Each one will have to be studied out to suit the locality, and the grouping must be made to work in with the best facilities obtainable. In all such cases one of the principal points is to select a convenient position for the booking-hall, easy of access to all persons entering the station premises. On no account should the ticket-office be placed in a position tending to block the thoroughfare on to the platforms. ”

“ The business office occupies the smallest corner, as if it was of the smallest importance in a hall so replete with ornament and so devoted to comfort and luxury. The telegraph and ticket offices are also in the rotunda, and everything that pertains to the more prosaic business ideas—but they do not intrude upon the dreamy existence that obtains from the antique surroundings. ”

“ So much has it become the custom in these later times for the Post-office to afford facilities to the public in whatever will tend to increase the business of the Department, that in all large towns pillar-boxes or branch offices are dotted about everywhere at short distances, thus altering the conditions which formerly obtained, when the chief office was the great central point where correspondence had to be deposited for despatch. ”

“ It is, I think, undoubtedly true that the amount of accommodation given by the Post-Office of the States is small, as compared with that afforded in some other countries, and that that accommodation is lessened by delays and uncertainty.... Here in England, it is the object of our Post-Office to carry the bulk of our letters at night, to deliver them as early as possible in the morning, and to collect them and take them away for despatch as late as may be in the day; so that the merchant may receive his letters before the beginning of his day's business, and despatch them after its close. ”

“ By this time the owner of the hotel had heard of the excitement, and he came bustling in.
"See here," he said to Sladen, "you can't use this hotel for an employment office. If you want to hire help, you have got to do it on the outside." ”

“ You need not trouble yourself about good air or bad air at the Auditorium: the house is ventilated automatically, by machinery. Among other modern improvements is a letter chute which extends to the top of the house. Your letters from any floor drop into a locked United States post-office box, opened at intervals by the official carrier.
There are four hundred and fifty rooms. As hotel men usually reckon “about one and a half guests to a room” there is accommodation for six hundred people. Charge for rooms: European plan, $2 to $5 per day; American plan, $4 to $6 per day. ”

“ The term 'branch post office,' within the meaning of the act, includes every place within such office where letters are kept in the regular course of business, for reception, stamping, assorting, or delivery. Of course, a letter thrown upon the floor, or laid upon a desk appropriated to other and different purposes, could not be said to have been deposited in the post office ”

“ In some resorts there is a regular office, as in a legitimate hotel, where couples register at the desk; in others, a small window is all that can be seen. The clerk pushes the book through the opening and the man registers, often without seeing the clerk’s face. ”

“ It isn't sad. When they shut me in here first I felt the day was so long. Since the King's Post Office I like it more and more being indoors, and as I think I shall get a letter one day, I feel quite happy and then I don't mind being quiet and alone. I wonder if I shall make out what'll be in the King's letter?
Gaffer. Even if you didn't wouldn't it be enough if it just bore your name? ”

“ Q. When a man escorts home from the theater a woman who lives in an apartment house, should he leave her in the lobby?
A. Whether in an apartment house or elsewhere, the hour is too late to pay a call.
Q. Is the management of an apartment house responsible for mistakes or oversights made by the employees?
A. This would depend on the individual case. If there is an office, all requests and orders should be left at the desk. Messages and orders should never be given to the hall men or elevator boys.
Q. Should a wife’s card appear on the letter box or door of the apartment? ”

“ On the train back to New York she formulated her suggestions for hotels, among which, in her own words, were the following:
“ (1) Make the offices decent rooms—rem. living-room at Gray Wolf Lodge. Take out desks—guests to register and pay bills in small office off living-room—keep letters there, too. Not much room needed and can’t make pleasant room with miserable old ‘desk’ sticking out into it.
“ (2) Cut out the cuspidors. Have special room where drummers can play cards and tell stories and spit. Allow smoking in ‘office,’ but make it pleasant. ”

“ Sometimes where a business firm is small or little known, it facilitates the delivery of a business letter to place the number of the office room in a building upon the envelope. Where, however, the firm is so large that probably the entire mail is carried from the post office in bags, or where a post office box is doubtless made use of instead of the carriers' delivery, even the street number is superfluous. ”

“ I accompanied the old gentleman down in the elevator, to the office, where we picked our teeth.
Then I addressed the clerk in injured tones: "I have a complaint to make."
"Let's have it," said the genial Harry.
"That black, blue-brown hat custodian at the dining room is forever getting my tile mixed with those of other guests. I hate to make a fuss, but——"
"You are quite right, Mr. Pod," said the clerk, seriously, "A first-class hotel should not tolerate such inefficiency in a trusted employee. I'll discharge the fellow at once." ”

“ It is much easier to get rid of a visitor from the entrance hall or reception room than from an inside office. If he says that he will see him in the reception room the girl reports to the visitor that he will come in a few minutes, offers him a magazine, and asks him to make himself at home. If the president says that he will see the visitor in his office the young man sends one of the messenger boys to usher him through the building. ”

“ Second, the type used on the hotel menu cards was identically the same that the disloyal circulars had been printed from. Third, between the hours of two and five in the mornings, the night clerk's duties permitted him to be absent from the hotel office. ”

“ Breaking into the ticket-office to haul out a small safe, and such express packages as had not been delivered, was the work of a few moments, while some energetic villagers, with more vigor than discretion, rushed into the attic and threw from the dormers a lot of old lanterns, boxes, broken bits of furniture, and like rubbish already partly on fire, that had been accumulating there ever since the station was built and antedating the checking system. ”

“ Sometimes there is a man in livery at the door of the dining-room who performs this office, sometimes each waiter collects them from the diners at the table where he is stationed. When the plan of printing a sheet containing the names of all the subscribers is followed, and no one is assigned a seat after this list goes to press, it is not really necessary to take up the tickets. If any one has forgotten to pay, the committee can easily send him a bill. Where the tickets are collected, it suffices for a man who has forgotten his to give his visiting-card. ”

“ While some of the officers are attending in this way to the wants of the country, others are serving the interests of the town. A hundred or two gentlemen, bankers and manufacturers, pay an extra guinea yearly in order to secure certain special privileges at the Post-Office. These privileges consist, in brief, of having their letters arranged in private boxes, each labelled with their names, and delivered from these boxes by one of the clerks as soon as the office is opened, or the moment the letter-carriers emerge from it to enter upon any of the daily deliveries of letters. ”

“ The office is a dark little box of a place, with two serious functionaries, who seem to receive the visitor only with suspicion. The gorgeous and affable hotel clerk of northern latitudes is unknown. In the rear are more courts, not arcaded ”

“ Those grotesqueries of the tramp and the fantastically laughable adventures of Wriford in his company—do they mingle quite smoothly with the painfully realistic manifestations of poor Wriford's state? Can so dreadful a theme ride off successfully on so bizarre a steed? And then again, was not the whole agony of the man on the physical and mental, not the spiritual plane? For did not Wriford before his illness give many obvious signs of unselfishness? Is there not in effect a certain confusion of the clean heart with the unclouded mind? ”

“ Briefly stated, this is the story of how the Post Office came to possess, as was already the case with the telegraph, the working of the telephone. Even now there are persons who are of opinion that although there should be one single authority to work the telephone, this should not be the Post Office. Let me submit a few considerations why I think the right policy has been adopted. The telephone has undoubtedly become a formidable competitor to the telegraph, and it is desirable, with a view to the economical adjustment of facilities, that both systems should be under one direction. ”

“ There are annual reports published by most of the Post Offices of the world, and they are very much alike in style and matter. The human touch has to be sought for in other ways and in other documents. Post Office history and economics are interesting to the student, but what interests us all are the men and women inside the Post Office, on both sides of the counter. ”

“ The hotel manager's desk, wheeled out in front of a crackling wood-fire in the ornate little lobby, was studded with its row of electric call-buttons; a railroad dining-car crew had taken possession of the kitchen; and the spacious writing-and lounging-room, sacred, in the season, to the guests of the exclusive hotel, housed a ranking of glass-topped telegraph-tables and impromptu desks—a work-room manned by a dozen picked young men, with O'Brien, the vice-president's private secretary, acting as the chief. ”

“ If he is in urgent need of any sum not exceeding £10 he can, instead of forwarding by post a notice of withdrawal, telegraph for the money to the Head Office, and instructions will be sent by telegram to the local postmaster to pay him on production of his book and proof of identity. In out-of-the-way villages the paying officer is often a small tradesman who has a limited vocabulary and does not readily grasp the meaning of his instructions from headquarters. ”

“ It is always difficult to transact any business in a building constructed for quite another purpose, and the conditions of service in the prison buildings had not been exactly comfortable. Spacious yards surround the Post Office buildings, and in these yards platforms have been built giving direct access to the Sorting Office. Post Office vans arrive in one yard loaded with receptacles containing parcels collected from post offices in the City and other parts of London, or sent up from the provinces and brought here from the railway termini. ”

“ As long ago as I can remember these omnibuses, taking the place of the old coaches, made only two or three trips a day, in answer to calls entered on a slate at the office in Brattle street, picking up passengers at their houses, and dropping them at their destinations. As business increased, passengers were obliged to take the omnibuses at the office, starting at every hour, and thus they became known as hourlies. ”

“ The Post Office Department requires the railroad company to take the mail from the post office wherever the office is within 80 rods of the depot, and the company has an agent, and in many cases to perform the terminal service regardless of the distance between the post office and the station. ”

“ Cassandra chokes over a fish-bone! That what I meant about Mrs. Vaizey's courage. And the reward of it is that, after your first moment of incredulity, the fish-bone isn't in the least absurd. Poor Cassandra comes quite near to expiring of it; and Dane, having thumped and battered her into safety, sobs out his wild and whirling passing, while Grizel and poor Teresa have just to sit about and listen. It really is rather a striking and original climax; incidentally it is far the best scene in an otherwise not very brilliant tale. ”