Supper room

“ At one o’clock a very ‘recherché’ cold supper is served, with ‘force champagne.’ The supper-room is usually on the ground-floor, and the table of course cannot contain above twenty persons at a time, so that the company go down in troops, and meet, pushing and elbowing, on the narrow staircase. If you succeed in getting a seat, you may rest a little; and many avail themselves of this privilege with small regard to their successors: little attention is paid to giving place to the ladies. ”

“ Take the partner with whom you may happen to be dancing when supper is announced to the supper-table, unless she has come with a gentleman, in which case you must not usurp his privilege. If she is disengaged, escort her to a seat in the supper-room, if possible, and see that she is served with the dishes she selects. Do not take your own supper at the same time; wait till the lady has finished; then take her back to the ball-room, and repeat the process, if necessary, with some other lonely damsel. ”

“ Equally shortly he turned on his heel, and reaching out once more for his rod-case and grip went on up the stairs to his own room.
One of the pleasantest things about arriving home very late in the afternoon is the excuse it gives you for loafing in your own room while other people are getting supper. No existent domestic sound in the whole twenty-four hours is as soothing at the end of a long journey as the sound of other people getting supper. ”

“ The ladies remained in the Bazaar and discussed oranges, with an occasional dance to the pianoforte, as the band retired for refreshment too, in one of the attendants' rooms. I followed the company to their supper room, as I had come to see, not to eat. About four hundred sat down in a large apartment, and there were, besides, sundry snug supper-parties in smaller rooms. Each guest partook of an excellent repast of meat and vegetables, with a sufficiency of beer and pipes to follow. ”

“ Any body who, being already in bed, and therefore legitimately somniferous, happens to overhear us in the next room loudly declaring our intention of beginning forthwith a supper of savoury and palatable dishes, and who, thereupon, greedily shakes off his incipient torpidity, and rushes into the apartment in order to share the banquet, but finds no supper, and ourselves laughing at his credulity, has no right at all to assert that he has been subjected to hardships or treated with cruelty. ”

“ I know this place. The rooms are unspeakable—not a bedroom that isn’t a megaphone, magnifying every whisper! There is only one suitable place—the main dining-room. The proprietor leaves the oil-lamp burning in there all night. People go to bed early; they prefer to drink in their bedrooms because it costs less than treating a crowd! I shall provide a light supper, and my maid shall lay the table after everybody else is gone up-stairs. ”

“ You see how this corridor runs over to the new part, where my bedroom opens directly upon the hall there. Old P’lina sleeps near you, if you decide to take this room. You will see a picture of your mother that will give you great pleasure, I think, and I’m leaving you alone now, child,—to go in by yourself. You will find me in my bedroom for a while, but if you want to stay here, I will see that you are called for supper. It will be late, I think. We have supper, not dinner, at night, except when we have guests. ”

“ We afterwards see the six Poor Travellers who have had their supper, and are comfortably smoking their pipes in a snug room, and we have a pleasant and interesting chat with them. They are much above the condition of ordinary tramps, and are lodged in six separate bedrooms, or "dormitories" which open out of a gallery at the back part of the building, a very curious structure, remaining just as it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. For supper, each man is allowed half a pound of cooked meat, a pound of bread, and half-a-pint of porter, and receives fourpence in money on leaving. ”

“ They knew so well how it felt, that they kept one bed in the boys' room, and any man who came at dusk got his supper, to sleep there, and his breakfast, and there never was anything to pay. The girls always scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother said she slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them. ”

“ The morning foggy and chill; the hotel parlor, so pleasant the evening before, as you sat upon its comfortable sofa with a party of friends looking now quite as miserable as you feel, with its gay bouquets of yesterday drooping and faded. Blue-looking men emerging from the bar-room, twisting their travelling-shawls, in folds more warm than graceful, over their chests and shoulders; ladies shivering as the chill morning air strikes their but half-protected, shrinking figures. ”

“ Yes, I walk down these long ways on Sunday afternoons, when they are at their best. Sometimes, if you choose the right hour, you may look into one 'breakfast room'—an apartment half sunken in the earth—after another, and see in each one the table laid for tea, showing the charming order and uniformity that prevail. ”

“ I verily believe that a fair description—none of your poetical balderdash, but an honest plodding description of a perfectly comfortable bed, and of the process of going to sleep, would, judiciously administered soon after dinner, overpower the vivacity of any tranquil gentleman who loves a nap after that meal—gently draw the curtains of his senses, and extinguish the bed-room candle of his consciousness. ”

“ If you are like me, it is in broad daylight—between two and three in the afternoon—when the servants are all idling after their dinner, and the house is silent. You are alone in a big, bright room, perhaps, with another room opening out of it, and a door a long way off. You sit writing at your table, and you feel all at once that the room is haunted—there must be something or some one stealing in at that remotest door. You daren’t look round. ”

“ Then, by nine or ten o'clock, shut up rigorously every window, darkening those on which the sun would beat, out-side the glass—by means of blinds or outer shutters—until the evening, when they may all be set wide open again. All woollen draperies, curtains and valences should be done away with in a sick-room. ”

“ Again at noon you would have seen that the women had a rest room of their own where they could eat their lunch in comfort—a rest room with couches, and easy chairs, and palms and flowers, and a piano, and a talking machine, and a floor that you could dance on, if you felt like dancing immediately before or after lunch. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A canary-bird in the sunniest window is a good thing to have in a breakfast-room if you like his shrill warbling. A pot of English ivy, brave and green, twisting over the face of the old clock, and festooning the windows, is a choice bit of brightness in the winter time. In summer, when flowers are cheap and plentiful, never set the table without them if you can get nothing more than a button-hole bouquet to lay on John’s napkin. ”

“ Almost everywhere I went in England I used to go up to bed to find the windows of my room closed and locked under the drawn blinds—part of the housemaid's preparations for the night; whereas I am accustomed to sleep with three wide open, and to wish that roof and walls could be dispensed with. Although I adjusted myself so easily to the feather-bed, I drew the line at the shut-up room; the fresh night air was indispensable. But I would sometimes find the bedclothes damp in the morning, and the clothes I had taken off too clammy to put on again. ”

“ The guest room where you sleep at night must be shared with others. Along the inner wall stands a raised ledge of bricks. It is built like an oven and is heated with cattle-dung beneath; and on the platform the sleeper, if not half suffocated, is at any rate half roasted. ”

“ After breakfast, it is customary for the ladies to adjourn to the drawing-room, where they converse, or read the papers, or receive early visiters, while the chambermaids are putting the bedchambers in order. 106Some who are not accustomed to hotels, go immediately from the breakfast-table to their own apartment, sitting there among the flue and dust during the whole process of bed-making and room-sweeping; afraid to trust the chambermaid alone, lest she should steal something. ”

“ Hence, the evening meal is apt to be sketchy; a furtive and far from creditable performance, with the vessels of the midday meal for its background.
Then, with a sense of relief, I shut the door upon that episode, and the evidences thereof, and betake me to the room which is really mine; where the big hearth is, and the camp-bed, and the writing-table, the books, and the big Ceylon-made lounge-chair. The first evening pipe is nearly always good; the second may be flavoured with melancholy, but yet is seldom unpleasing. ”

“ As the clock struck eight, she hastened out of bed, vexed at having lost so much of the day in sleep; and on perceiving, when about half dressed, that she had in her room neither water nor hand-bason to wash in, she threw on her dimity bed-gown, and went out to the kitchen, to procure a supply of these necessary articles. ”

“ You sleep in the office of the hotel, between two safes, because there is no room to be had anywhere. Your curtainless windows are right on the street, and the endless razzle-dazzle of night-life goes on. ”

“ If you feel too much fatigued to-night for society, we shall expect to see you to-morrow at breakfast. If not, there is the room where you will find us assembled till ten o'clock this evening." And he pointed to a door on the other side of the hall, which was shut, notwithstanding the heat of the night. He now guided me up the stairs to a large, handsome room on the first floor, where I found everything that could be required for comfort, or even luxury ”

“ A green satin, lace-covered bed is on the floor beside me. It is about eleven o’clock in the morning. B. is sitting up in his bed a few feet off, smoking a pipe. We have just finished a light repast of—what do you think? you will never guess—coffee and rolls. We intend to put the week straight by stopping in bed all day, at all events until the evening. Two English ladies occupy the bedroom next to ours. They seem to have made up their minds to also stay upstairs all day. We can hear them walking about their room, muttering. ”

“ Sometimes as many as four and five sleep in one bed, and that may be placed in the basement, dining-room or kitchen where there is neither adequate light nor air. In some cases men who work during the night sleep by day in beds used by others during the night. ”

“ I love the sunshine everywhere, and the curtains up to let it in. And the flowers in the rooms, and the little fern-dish on the dining-room table, the books and magazines just lying around ready to be picked up; Baby Lester laughing and singing all over the house, and lovely ladies and gentlemen in the drawing-room having music and tea and little cakes when I come home from school in the afternoon. ”

“ If he prefer a real genuine swim he finds it near the back door of the hotel in a tank a hundred feet long, in fresh cold water with the air barely taken off. In his room he has a soft bed to sleep upon, surrounded by tasty furniture, and eats in a large dining room attended by silent waiters, and provided with fruits, wines and viands fit to satisfy the most fastidious. ”

“ Loitering over coffee and toast, in the sunny dining-room, the morning wasted away. The newspapers were idly discussed, various scraps of the house gossip went the rounds. Many a time, before her entrance into the business world, Susan had known this pleasant idleness to continue until ten o'clock, until eleven o'clock, while the room, between the stove inside and the winter sunshine outside, grew warmer and warmer, and the bedrooms upstairs waited in every stage of appalling disorder and confusion. ”

“ The invincible custom of New Canaan of using a bedroom only at night made her unheard-of inclination to sit in her room during the day or before bedtime the subject of so much comment and wonder that, feeling it best to yield to the prejudice, she usually read, sewed, or wrote letters in the kitchen, or, when a fire was lighted, in the combination dining-room and sitting-room. ”

“ We've got supper and breakfast as well."
The night deepened, and in the little saloon host and guest sat down to a supper of fried fish, blueberries and cream. The small, red curtains were drawn, and over the tiny fireplace a binnacle lamp glowed softly. ”

“ I am not at all nervous, and certainly I was not expecting to see anything, as No. 2 is always supposed to be a 'quiet' room. I was some time getting to bed, but I put out my candle at twelve o'clock, and, after noticing that the moon was shining brightly, I got into bed. Contrary to my usual custom I did not fall asleep for some time, and I felt that the room was, in some inexplicable way, not as usual. ”

“ These rooms are not merely places to sleep in; they are as completely furnished as those of your own house, with large glasses, sofas, lounges, fauteuils, and every convenience of the town or residence you have just left. You are in the country without missing any of the comforts of the city. There are two excellent tables d’hôte, one at an early and one at a late hour, (5 o’clock,) to suit your habits; breakfast in your rooms when you ring; supper from seven or eight in the evening till four or any o’clock the next morning, à la carte. ”