Motel

“ I felt that such radios in the cabins would put our motel on too obviously commercial a basis, while Grant was beginning to toy with the idea of putting ordinary little radios in each cabin for the free use of our customers, as a deluxe touch to the accommodations. Unaccustomed to such luxurious details as free radios, many of the people who occupied the cabins would be sure to choose our motel in preference to any other if they ever went through Banning again. ”

“ Always there are the big jobs awaiting any rare moments of leisure--digging out the insidious weeds that thrust their way through the gravel, planting flowers and improving the external appearance of the place, utilizing the extra land, and repairing the inevitable damage done by careless customers.
Mr. Featherbrain, the old man next door--whose black hair, I suspected, was dyed--finally got his motel finished to the point where it was ready to operate; and one day some men came and installed a big neon sign (Palace Motel--Vacancy) in front of his place. ”

“ PEOPLE WHO MANAGE motels shouldn't throw stones, for they live in glass houses just as surely as does any goldfish. In fact, a goldfish in a bowl placed in the center of Grand Central Station would live a life of privacy and seclusion, compared to the life of a motel owner.
I am so inured, by now, to the lack of privacy, that I can calmly continue dusting furniture or changing Donna's clothes if a couple of strange men barge into the living room, mistaking it for the office. I am not in the least upset if, after I have gone to bed, someone rings the bell and asks to use the telephone. ”

“ I dressed hastily, and as I pulled my clothing on I took a slow dig at the other cabins in the motel.
Number One contained a salesman type, I decided, after digging through his baggage. Number Two was occupied by an elderly couple who were loaded with tourist-type junk and four or five cameras. Number Three harbored a stopover truck driver and Number Four was almost overflowing with a gang of schoolgirls packed sardine-wise in the single bed. Number Five was mine. Number Six was vacant. ”

“ I was supposed to meet Larry in the cocktail lounge of a hotel in Manitou Springs, the smaller town I'd passed through the day before on my way down from the mountain. I drove back that way now, with all my possessions in my new car, including the purse that held not only my remaining diamonds and birth certificate, but also a car registration, driver's license, wallet, money, and makeup. A little more than halfway there, I saw a motel with a "Vacancy" sign out, and an attractive clean look about it. ”

“ ANYONE CAN MANAGE a motel successfully--anyone who can subsist on meals snatched a mouthful at a time, and requires no sleep; anyone who is a mechanic, gardener, publicity agent, handyman, psychologist, carpenter, and midwife combined; anyone who can cheerfully greet as "Mrs. Beaulabottom" each of the various women who accompanies salesman Mr. ”

“ The frequent wrecks, and the fact that in two of them the cars had come right off the highway onto our land, made me very glad that the front of our motel was sixty feet from the highway. A hundred and sixty feet would have been safer! And after a truck, struck by a car when it was trying to make a left turn into Moe's restaurant, rammed into the garage of cabin 16--which corresponded to the children's bedroom on the other side--I rearranged the furniture in their room, in such a way that neither David's bed nor Donna's crib was near the side of the wall that was closest to the highway. ”

“ It was at once, in a sense—to compare old times with new—the hotel and railway-station of an age that knew neither railways nor the class of house we style “hotel.” It was the fine flower of the hostelling business, and to it came and went the carriers’ waggons, the early travellers riding horseback, and, in the course of time, as the age of wonderful inventions began to dawn, the stage and mail-coaches. Travellers of the most gentle birth, equally with those rich merchants and clothiers who were the greatest travellers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, inned at such establishments. ”

“ He took the road by which he had come from the depot, and passing rapidly by the few shops that clustered about the hotel, entered at once upon the street whose picturesque appearance had attracted his attention earlier in the evening.
What is he seeking? Exercise—the exhilaration of motion—the refreshment of change? If so, why does he look behind and before him with an almost guilty air as he advances towards a dimly lighted house, guarded by the dense branches of a double row of poplars? Is it here the attraction lies which has drawn him from the hotel and the companionship of his friend? ”

“ What hotel should she go to? If she told a cabman to drive to an hotel, any hotel, what would he do--or say? He might drive to something dreadfully expensive, and not at all the quiet sort of thing she required. Finally she decided that even for an hotel she must look round, and that meanwhile she would "book" her luggage at Waterloo. She told the porter to take it to the booking-office, and it was only after a disconcerting moment or so that she found she ought to have directed him to go to the cloak-room. ”

“ Then it is a busy, bustling, uncomfortable scene at the hotel. Piles of luggage strew the hall. Apprehensive passengers are arriving by successive trains, and others in a woe-begone condition, and in all sorts and manners of wraps and disguises, by the boats. They are dining, teaing, suppering in a confused disagreeable way in the coffee-room. Anxious waiters and active chamber-maids are hurrying about. Porters meet you in narrow corners laden with luggage. There is nothing to invite you to remain in the public room. There is nothing to induce you to venture long out of doors. ”

“ We have spacious quarters at the Station Hotel, our lattice windows opening upon a stone balcony beyond which we can see the fountain, flowers and shrubbery of the gardens, and farther away, against the purple sky, the massive yet graceful towers of the minster. How different the Station Hotel is from the average railway hotel in America can be appreciated only by one who has enjoyed the hospitality of the one and endured the necessity of staying at the other. ”

“ A Pullman lower or a third story front in a three-dollar-a-day hotel was often his bed, and a marble-top table with iron legs screwed to the floor of a railroad restaurant and within sound of a big-voiced gateman bawling out the trains, generally his board. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Meanwhile, the traveller who follows the beaten track has really very little to complain of, for during the last ten years great progress has been made both in the train service and the hotel accommodation; and when you have grumbled and slept and scolded through the eight or ten or twelve or twenty hours’ railway journey from one provincial capital to another, and take your place at the table d’hôte in one of the big new hotels, you might almost imagine yourself in London or Paris or New York. ”

“ There is the boarding-house, advertised as "Directly facing the sea;" and when you have engaged your rooms, and arrive with all your luggage, you find the establishment is at the far end of a side street; and "Directly facing the sea" is interpreted by the fact that by hanging half-way out of the sitting-room widow, and screwing your head round violently to the left, you can see the place where that watery monarch ought to be.
"A boarding-house is so much nicer than an hotel, because you get to know the people so much easier," I heard a girl remark once. ”

“ Leaving the custom-house behind you, the way is clear to seek a hotel. Generally there are plenty of runners at the landing-place, and if you have chosen the establishment where you are to stop, you have only to name it, and the runner for that house will step forward to take charge of yourself and your belongings. Sometimes the baggage is taken on the cab or carriage which carries you, and at others it is intrusted to licensed porters, who are responsible for its safe delivery, and can be trusted without much hesitation. ”

“ The carriage pauses, while two of us who have hurried ahead examine the two hotels reputed best; each is equally uninspiring, and the one we finally choose we thereupon immediately regret choosing and regretfully choose the other. Meanwhile the carriage is being circummured by an increasing hedge of idlers and invalids, staring with great and open-minded interest at the arrival of visitors who seemed actually healthy and were coming here uncompelled; and the visitors themselves are glad to vanish from the public wonder into the stone passageway of the hotel. ”

“ The old must ever give place to the new. But what lovely peeps there are from this hotel, from the balcony and from the bedrooms. It is a river house now in every sense of the word, though not old as a hotel of the kind, and all day long, and far into the night, the bar and passages and the coffee-rooms are crowded in summer with men in snowy flannels, and with some in sailor garb and with artificial sailor swagger. ”

“ They aren't there. Left behind at Dover probably. Wire for them at once. No idea how difficult it was to describe luggage vividly and yet economically till I tried. However, it will be sent on by the next boat, and arrive some time in the evening, so it's of no consequence. Now for the Hotel. Ask for the bus for the Continental. The Continental is not open yet. Very well, the Hôtel de la Plage, then. Closed! All the hotels facing the sea are, it seems. Sympathetic Porter recommends one in the town, and promises to come and tell me as soon as the luggage turns up. ”

“ I remember speculating on the chance of shelter there, if at the eleventh hour the hotel failed us. And then we were shut out by the sacristan, to wander again [66] through narrow, twisting streets; through brighter, livelier thoroughfares, the shops open, citizens and peasants laughing and talking; and so back to the Place, roofs and towers now but a black shadow on the dark blue of the evening sky; and at last to the hotel, where the good waiter met us with smiles.—A room at last! ”

“ HEIDELBERG.
WE stopped at a hotel by the railway station. Next morning, as we sat in my room waiting for breakfast to come up, we got a good deal interested in something which was going on over the way, in front of another hotel. First, the personage who is called the portier, (who is not the porter, but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel,) [1] appeared at the door in a spick and span new blue cloth uniform, decorated with shining brass buttons, and with bands of gold lace around his cap and wristbands; and he wore white gloves, too. ”

“ On the right is a luxurious, low-built hotel all but toppling over the edge; on the left is a railway station; and that is all. The road almost doubles back on itself, swerving due south towards the Continental Trail eighty miles away. I do not mean to imply that at the end of this world there will be either a luxurious hotel or a railway station at the service of the weary traveller, but the appearance of finality of all things is complete when one is faced with that terrible chasm ahead. ”

“ The multitude spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting it transferred to the omnibuses; but the courier puts you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time, and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready, you can go at once to bed. Some of those other people will have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain, before they find accommodations. ”

“ By the magic wand of a colored porter the seats are converted into comfortable beds, and the traveler may be whirled along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and all the while he sleeps as calmly as at home. Toilet-rooms are at the ends of every carriage, one for gentlemen and the other for ladies, where you may perform your ablutions and put your hair in shape, so as to present as creditable an appearance as when starting on your journey. ”

“ Each characteristic sound was too suggestive to be passed over unnoticed. Beneath and around me, I heard the stir of the hotel; the loud voices of guests, landlord, or bar-keeper; steps echoing on the staircase; the ringing of a bell, announcing arrivals or departures; the porter lumbering past my door with baggage, which he thumped down upon the floors of neighboring chambers ”

“ The pursuit, the hotel, the tremulous daring of his entry, the swift adventure of the inn yard, the moonlight— Abruptly he threw the clothes back and rose into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Without was the noise of shutters being unfastened and doors unlocked, and the passing of hoofs and wheels in the street. He looked at his watch. ”

“ Right at the foot of the talus stands a group of connected log-cabins forming a comfortable hotel. As we are bound for the hot springs, we do not remain here, but climbing into the spring wagon in waiting ride southward for a mile back into the hills to a second little cuchara of a valley where are the springs themselves and the hotel, bath houses and accessories belonging to the sanitarium they have created. This hotel is delightfully home-like in its excellence of bed and board.
Persons go to Wagon Wheel Gap seeking recreation and for recovery from ill health. ”