Hotel room

“ So obscure and involved are the hotel-interiors, that it would be madness for a stranger to venture in search of his room without the guidance of some one far more familiar with the devious course of the narrow clearings through the forest of apartments than the landlord himself. ”

“ It was impossible for any agency short of sheer fairyland magic to have produced overnight a room that displayed its long-term occupancy by a not-too-immaculate character. That distinctive sour smell takes a long time to permeate the furnishings of any decent hotel ”

“ Competition is great, and success will come to the best and cleanest hotel. The traveler loves to slip into a bed with perfectly laundered sheets that do not look as if the maids had sprinkled, folded, and pressed them between the mattress, as chambermaids ordinarily do in hotels where there is a scant supply of linen.
Sometimes the chambermaid will ask the laundryman for a pair of sheets to make up a sample-room, as the guest wants to receive a customer. ”

“ The rooms in this establishment are furnished with only the bare necessities of a room—a bed, a chair, sometimes a rocker, sometimes with the rockers broken off, but still used as a chair, a rug on the floor, but never a big one, or a good one, and the bathroom, but never in the history of Juarez has the hotel water heater ever been known to work, never any toilet paper, but a pile of newspapers stacked in the corner, a mirror, a cracked one, but still usable, if you are not particular—and one seldom is—when one is on a party. ”

“ The features of the Grand Hotel, the longest established of these three, are well-known, but former patrons will scarcely recognize the reception-room, which, with its new, solid-looking furniture and rich, dark decorations, is now one of the most attractive apartments of its kind to be seen, even in these days of the upholsterer and decorator. While artistic and costly, it has an air of utility and comfort which you will not find very often repeated. ”

“ This hotel is fine, standing in the centre of a pretty garden. We have a luxurious room and on the first floor. We are getting to like the single beds, one apiece, that we have everywhere over here very much, for if one does feel like taking the ‘spoon fashion’ position, there is no one with coequal rights near to object. Nor are the employees as attentive at the home hotels. ”

“ In the hotels and lodging houses every arrangement is made to keep each guest or party of guests as separate as possible from all the rest. There are no public tables or public drawing rooms. Each party, on its arrival at the hotel, takes a suit of rooms, consisting, at least, of a sitting room and bed room, and every thing that they require is served to them separately there, just as if there were no other guests in the house. ”

“ The hotel is only four stories high, yet there is an elevator; of course electric lights and all modern improvements. Neither is the building deep, but it has great length, to give views of ocean in front and of green hills in the rear. It stands north and south thus affording ocean views from three sides. Of the 225 rooms, every one has a sunny exposure at some hour of the day; every one is well ventilated and lighted; every one is an “outside room,” and every guest feels that his is the best suite in the house. ”

“ Place your bed against the side wall, so that the morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.
Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely. ”

“ A Bedroom in the Union Pacific Hotel, North Platte—Not Much of a Hardship, Is It?
As a matter of fact, it is an ocher-colored wooden railroad station, a rather bare dining-room, and lunch counter, and perfectly good, clean bedrooms upstairs. You cannot get a suite with a private bath, and if you are more or less spoiled by the supercomforts of luxurious living, you may not care to stay very long. ”

“ H. said we must be prepared at any moment to leave the hotel if necessary. So we went up to our room and in pitch darkness [51] groped about and collected a few things (F.'s miniature and the presentation portrait of him, my despatch case with his letters, my fur coat, hat and boots) , and we took them down to the sitting-room, which H. uses as an office, on the first floor. All the people in the hotel were collected in the lounge, which is very large and faces the street, and the whole of the back was in complete darkness. ”

“ Those who are educated understand that by the "inside" of a hotel is meant everything except the four outer walls of it—the fittings, the furniture, the bar, Billy the desk-clerk, the three dining-room girls, and above all the license granted by King Edward VII., and ratified further by King George, for the sale of intoxicating liquors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is one of the strangest features of French hotels that dressing-tables are not included in any suite of bedroom furniture; there are looking-glasses by the score, there are handsome marble slabs bearing ornate clocks that do not go, there are gorgeous armoires à glace, but never a good, commonplace, useful dressing-table. French people seem to do without them in the same simple, uncomplaining way that they do without baths.
We cannot pretend to say we slept well in our opera-box. Everything in the hotel seemed to stay up{23} ”

“ Standing near the door, we dipped our fingers in the holy water, crossed and blessed ourselves, and proceeded up to the sleeping-room, in the usual order, two by two. ”

“ In the first place there is in hotels no such thing as decadent luxury; all that the best offer are things such as plenty of light, air, space to move in, electric light when you want it, hot water day and night, a telephone by your bedside, a comfortable common room to write in, a band to amuse you while you have your meals ”

“ After so many weeks of wandering, I have settled down to a job again. The last six “huts” in which I have been were in a barracks, a casino, a private house, a convent, a college and a hospital. This “hut” is in a hotel. The hotel is situated directly back of the Conflans-Jamy railroad station. Before the war the hotel was a prosperous and pleasant place, judging from the photograph which Madame showed us; its windows filled with real lace curtains all matching! as she pointed out; the broad terrace in front on sunny days filled with little tables and crowded with well-dressed people. ”

“ The interior, while being on a broad, liberal, yes, a luxurious scale, has no striking novelties. It is modelled after the style of the large modern American hotels of the first-class. There is a large and splendid “office” with reading-room, smoking-room, writing-room, and small parlors branching off; there are open fires and all the etceteras of convenience and luxury; the whole ground floor is marble-tiled, the corridors are ten feet wide and richly carpeted ”

“ It is difficult to render the intensity with which one felt the great sphere of the hotel close round one, covering one in as with high, shining crystal walls, stretching beneath one’s feet an immeasurable polished level, revealing itself in short as, for the time, for the place, the very order of nature and the very form, the only one, of the habitable world. ”

“ We are conducted to the second floor of the hotel by a steep and narrow stairway, which requires much ingenuity in the ascent, as the steps are constructed at such a peculiar angle that it is difficult to balance one’s self upon them. We reach the top as gracefully as possible under the circumstances, and find two pleasant communicating rooms overlooking the main street. Rooms, beds and all our surroundings are wonderfully clean, and filled with an atmosphere of the past, which is very charming. ”

“ If the door should stick you might not be found until the hotel got worried about your bill, when perhaps it would be too late.
Still, I think the chummiest bath-rooms are those with a bay-window; very reprehensible those which have no hooks on which to hang your pajamas and razor strop.
Then there are those hotels so far-seeing into the possibilities of evil chance and so solicitous of your equanimity that they provide your pin cushion with one suspender button. I suppose the thought is to impress you with the idea that nothing for your comfort, even down to the smallest detail, is forgotten. ”

“ The new hotel, which bears its name, and is built closer to it, commands the best view, saving that from the mound beneath it, which, in its deceitful neighbourhood, appears a hillock, but whose steep side I climbed with difficulty, and was puzzled to descend with sober step. ”

“ What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their hiding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night! ”

“ On the first floor of a large hotel, formerly occupied, perhaps, by a farmer-general, you enter a suite of apartments, decorated with arabesques, and mirrors of large dimensions, in a style no less elegant than splendid, where tables are completely arranged for large or small parties. In winter, these rooms are warmed by ornamental stoves, and lighted by quinquets, a species of Argand's lamps. They are capable of accommodating from two hundred and fifty to three hundred persons, and, at this time of the year, the average number that dine here daily is about two hundred ”

“ The incessant sound of bells and gongs, the rolling of hacks to and from the door, the arrivals and departures every minute, the trampling of innumerable feet, the flirting and talking in every corridor, make these immense hotels more like a human beehive than anything else. ”

“ I have always said that the great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life, sir. ”

“ Such scores of invalids and pleasure-seekers come hither in search of health or amusement during the winter months, that although there are many first-class hotels, and over a hundred and fifty—counting those of a second-class and boarding-houses together—yet even then the accommodation is scarcely enough for the visitors. Everybody flocks to the large hotels; they like the elegantly upholstered drawing-rooms, with their gorgeous decorations and gilded mirrors, the lofty corridors, and, above all, the well-appointed cuisine. ”

“ Which explains why on entering our larger hotels one is taken by the throat, as it were, by a sickening long-dead atmosphere—in which the souvenir of past meals and decaying flowers floats like a regret—such as explorers must find on opening an Egyptian tomb.
Absurd as it may seem, it has become a distinction to have cool rooms. Alas, they are rare! Those blessed households where one has the delicious sensation of being chilly and can turn with pleasure toward crackling wood! ”

“ Nature’s Grand Hotel has its Season, like the others. As the guests one by one pack, pay, and depart, and the seats at the table-d’hote shrink pitifully at each succeeding meal; as suites of rooms are closed, carpets taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are staying on, en pension, until the next year’s full re-opening, cannot help being somewhat affected by all these flittings and farewells, this eager discussion of plans, routes, and fresh quarters, this daily shrinkage in the stream of comradeship. ”

“ Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. ”

“ In the best hotels a staff of servants sit on sofas on each landing waiting to attend to the summons of the guests. If you walk up and down your corridor for half an hour, every time you pass that sofa the servants will rise and remain standing till you have passed. ”

“ WE met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B, 5 Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows. So desirable in every way were the apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem when divided between us, that the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we at once entered into possession. ”

“ He said in an injured tone: “Mister, naturally the staff won’t bother your stuff. What kind of a hotel do you think this is?”
“Of course, of course,” I said. But I knew he was lying, because I knew what kind of hotel it was. The staff was there only because being there gave them a chance to knock down more money than they could make any other way. What other kind of hotel was there? ”

“ Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board. ”

“ It was pleasant to drive back to the hotel in the late afternoon, above a sea as mysteriously colored as the agates and cornelians of childhood, green as green milk, blue as laundry water, wine dark. ”