Lounge

“ I then observed a lounge fashioned after the comfortable shapes that we of the civilized world have evolved, chairs of various shapes, skins of precious worth, from that of the monstrous white polar bear to the red fox and the caribou, covering a time-polished floor, and in one corner was a Russian stove of porcelain whose white tiles seemed out of place and incongruous in such a setting. ”

“ Then if one is a host there is nothing to do except to sit in one of the comfortable chairs in this ante-chamber and to look alternately up the crimson stairs to see whether one's guests are arriving and down another flight of stairs across the great lounge to the crystal screen of great panes framed in gilt metal which is the transparent barrier between the restaurant and its approaches. ”

“ It was her experience of summer hotels that a really fine day like this one was the cue for half the inhabitants to collect in the lounge, shut all the windows, and talk about conditions in the jute industry. To her surprise, though the sun was streaming down from a cloudless sky, the only occupant of the lounge was the octogenarian with the ear-trumpet. ”

“ The house was originally a butter market, and the entrance room, set about with little tables where the relations have their meals, has one side entirely of glass; the lounge beyond, which is for the staff, is glass-roofed, while that opening on the right hand of the dining-place, the lounge for the relations, has long windows all down the side; so it will be seen that light and air are abundant on the ground floor of the Hostel in spite of the fact that it looks on to a courtyard. ”

“ Its walls are creamy in colour, the curtains are of soft pink, and the tall windows south and east are reflected in mirrors, looking like other windows on the northern side, where the space is not occupied by the Palm Lounge. A musicians' gallery runs along the western side, and the doors into the kitchen are below this, but the red-coated musicians have forsaken their aerie, which now forms a way to ballrooms and galleries, and have found a snug corner on the floor of the restaurant. ”

“ I should explain that we were amusing ourselves in a room which was nearly as large as the lounge of this hotel, and furnished in a somewhat similar manner. There were carved pillars and stained glass domes, a little fountain, and all those other peculiarities of an Eastern household. ”

“ It was rather small, as lobbies go, with only one counter-desk, one lounge, and a couple of elevators, which you worked yourself, at the side. But doors opened out from the lobby on all sides, revealing glimpses of numerous attractive reception rooms beyond. ”

“ And she liked the great hotel lounges and parlors, with their heavy commercialized luxury of velvet and gilt, their desks with low lights at which one might sit and write letters while engaging the attention of any good-looking men who might be passing. Padded corridors, handsome men and luxurious women, dining-rooms pompous with elaborate service, the ceaseless flow of people who might be coming from anything and going anywhere—it all completely captured that roving spirit of excitement which was Fliss’s imagination. ”

“ All my life I had envied the loungers in the parks—those silent, inert figures that lie under the trees all the long summer day, their shabby hats over their faces, their hands clasped above their heads, legs sprawled in uncouth comfort, while the sun dapples down between the leaves and, like a good fairy godmother, touches their frayed and wrinkled garments with flickering figures of golden splendor, while they sleep. ”

“ Barbers, valets, messengers, and attendants of every description are on duty; a well-equipped hospital room is ready for emergencies; showers and needle-baths, smoking-rooms, lounges, writing-rooms, reading-rooms, coffee-rooms, and a spacious luncheon club, contribute their share to the refreshment of the outer and inner man. The luncheon club, which occupies the whole upper floor, is the last word in culinary perfection. ”

“ They vanished quietly upstairs in convoy of the manager's wife, and they did not re-appear for the lounge tea, which in any case would have been undrinkably stewed. It then became known, by the agency of one of those guests, to be found in every hotel, who acquire all the secrets of the hotel by the exercise of unabashed curiosity on the personnel, that the two ladies had engaged two bedrooms, Nos. 17 and 18, and the sumptuous private parlour with a balcony on the first floor, styled "C" in the nomenclature of rooms. ”

“ Let us try to give our readers a glimpse of the club room and its guests on this memorable evening.
Imagine, then, a large room with low ceiling and walls of dark oak panel, a large old-fashioned fireplace with dogs, and a Yule log blazing on the hearth. The curtains are old and embroidered, and closely drawn. The room is well lighted, and in the middle is a long table, at which, through a cloud of tobacco smoke, a party of nine—all lords of the creation—may be discovered. A bowl of punch is in the centre of the table, at which every now and then each guest replenishes his glass. ”

“ The streets were very clean, very sunny, very empty, and very dull. A few idle men lounged about the two inns, and the empty market-place, and the tradesmen’s doors, and some old people were dozing in chairs outside an alms-house wall; but scarcely any passengers who seemed bent on going anywhere, or to have any object in view, went by; and if perchance some straggler did, his footsteps echoed on the hot bright pavement for minutes afterwards. ”

“ I had patted the goats good-night and good-by, and going up to my room, thrown myself into a reclining-chair, deliciously tired as one can only be after a long day of Swiss mountain life. The door was open, the room full of pleasant twilight, the three ladies safe in their tower close by. I was thinking and wondering about them, when I heard a rustling at the opposite end of the room. Now, as you know, the place being spacious as a banqueting-hall, objects at a distance, especially in the half-light, might easily deceive one. ”

“ There were crowds in the hall through which one could scarce make his way—the writing-room was crowded, and the rustle of pens rose to a little breeze—the smoking-room, the bar, the barbers, the reception-room, the ladies’ drawing-room—all were crowded. At present not less than 2,500 people dine in the public room every day. On the kitchen floor there is a vast apartment, a hall without carpets or any furniture but plain chairs and tables, which are ranged in close rows, at which flocks of people are feeding, or discoursing, or from which they are flying away. ”

“ A tumble-down trunk in a corner of the room did precarious duty for a chair; a faded carpet hid the floor; a cheap rocking-chair in the act of moulting its upholstery spread its luxurious arms invitingly near the dim window; and a table, on which a pack of German playing cards was coyly half concealed by a newspaper, a coal-hod, and a poker, completed the necessary furnishing of the apartment. ”

“ All around the inner court a series of suites of rooms, each with its own bath and corner sitting-room—literally "a linkèd suiteness long drawn out." It is one eighth of a mile from my bedroom to my seat in the dining-room, so that lazy people are obliged to take daily constitutionals whether they want to or not, sighing midway for trolley accommodations. The dining-room may safely be called roomy, as it seats a thousand guests, and your dearest friends could not be recognized at the extreme end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you go out, you never find a dirty staircase, nor one in which the lighting serves only to make darkness visible. Throughout the house, day and night, reign the greatest order and decency; and in some hotels every spacious set of apartments has its own staircase, so that no one comes in contact with others. At table, the guest is furnished with a corresponding profusion of white table linen, and brilliantly polished table utensils; with a well-filled ‘plat de ménage,’ and an elegance of setting out which leaves nothing to wish for. ”

“ It should be a handsome, sombre room in oak and dark red, with sinister easy chairs and couches, great curtains discreetly drawn, a door to enter by, a door to hide by, a carelessly strewn table on which to write a letter reluctantly to dictation, another table exquisitely decorated for supper for two, champagne in an ice-bucket, many rows of books which on close examination will prove to be painted wood (the stage Lotharios not being really reading men) . ”

“ You go there, enter the great door, get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the gorgeous portier, and a bath ticket and an insult from the frowsy woman for a quarter, she strikes a bell and a serving man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, a bootjack and a sofa in it, and there you undress at your leisure. ”

“ Dining-rooms and breakfast-rooms may change places; double-bedded rooms and single-bedded rooms may shift their respective characters backwards and forwards amicably among each other—but the Bachelor Bedroom remains immovably in its own place; sticks immutably to its own bad character; stands out victoriously whether the house is full, or whether the house is empty, the one hospitable institution that no repentant after-thoughts of host or hostess can ever hope to suppress. ”

“ The room, which had obviously served, apart from being a store-room, as kitchen, dining room, and, in fact, for everything save a bedroom, was in a state of chaos—chairs were upset, a table stood up-ended against the wall, aid broken crockery was strewn everywhere. ”

“ The heart-tendrils have not time to weave themselves round the concierge, the chambermaid is still your bitterest foe, the waiter has not yet risen to the position of an unnaturally obliging brother; you are too hurried to discover the full charms of the armoire à glace in the bedroom, or the verandah outside the salon windows, and you scurry from one hotel to another, unregretful and heart-whole. ”

“ If a fellow-guest at the Grand Hotel of the Universe comes in at two in the morning, and going humming along the corridor to his room, flings his boot down upon the floor at his door with a resounding blow that awakens all neighboring sleepers, you may cover him with expletives, and consign him in imagination to a hundred direful dooms, but nevertheless he goes unpunished. ”

“ We had eleven closets with an extra storeroom for trunks in the basement, and enough cabinets in the kitchen and butler's pantry to stock a hotel, and as a crowning glory the front door did not open opposite the bathroom or kitchen as is the case in most apartments, but was near the front like the home of a Christian, and the dining-room gave into the front room with a largeness of vista which made us feel like millionaires. ”

“ We have the kitchenette, and a bathroom with two kinds of showers, and a bedroom apiece, though mine is really a closet, and two sitting-rooms, so two of us can have beaus the same night. If we feel the need of an extra sitting-room—that is, three beaus a night—we draw cuts to see who has to resort to the park, or a movie, or the ice-cream parlor, or the kitchenette. Our time is up next week and we shall return modestly to our boarding-houses. It is great fun, but it is expensive, and we are so busy. ”

“ In a top-floor room of one of the darkest of the dilapidated tenements, the dusty window-panes of which the last glow in the winter sky is tinging faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests, most of them fresh from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about the room. A reed-pipe and a tambourine furnish the music. One has the center of the floor. With a beer-jug filled to the brim on his head, he skips and sways, bending, twisting, kneeling, gesturing, and keeping time, while the men clap their hands. He lies down and turns over, but not a drop is spilled. ”

“ In that exceedingly simple room, with its oil-clothed floor, or possibly with its well-scrubbed boards, and leather-covered sofas, you see an apartment where a certain number of gentlemen meet after dinner to smoke their cigars, and take their coffee, and where they chat over the occurrences of the day, much in the same way that they would do in your presence. ”

“ Two folding-doors opened from the front room: the left to my suite of bedroom, bathroom, and dressing-room; the right to Durand’s. Beyond the latter’s was a charming little private dining-room with a small lift which connected directly with the kitchen. There were windows in all these rooms, giving either on street or courtyard. But the main point was this: that anybody wishing to enter Durand’s or my suite, or the private dining-room, had to pass from the main landing, up the branch corridor, and through our front room.
It was really a very safe place. ”

“ There is a door to each room, the oak chairs are bright with rubbing, and the floor, though unplaned, is so clean that one might eat off it. The table is clean and abundant, and the mother and daughters, though they do all the work, look as trim as if they did none, and actually laugh heartily. ”