o that if everybody had left the hall,
the first person returning would see at once what bells had been rung
during his absence, and the numbers of the rooms they belonged to. Why
this admirable contrivance has not been introduced into this country, I
cannot conceive.

The bar is one of the most--if not the most--important departments in
the hotel; comparatively nothing is drunk at dinner, but the moment the
meal is over, the bar becomes assailed by applicants; moreover, from
morning to midnight, there is a continuous succession of customers; not
merely the lodgers and their friends, but any parties passing along the
street, who feel disposed, walk into the bar of any hotel, and get "a
drink." The money taken at a popular bar in the course of a day is, I
believe, perfectly fabulous.

Scarcely less important than the bar is the barber's shop. Nothing
struck me more forcibly than an American under the razor or brush: in
any and every other circumstance of life full of activity and energy,
under the razor or brush he is the picture of indolence and
helplessness. Indifferent usually to luxury, he here exhausts his
ingenuity to obtain it; shrinking usually from the touch of a nigger as
from the venomed tooth of a serpent, he here is seen resigning his nose
to the digital custody of that sable operator, and placing his throat at
his mercy, or revelling in titillary ecstasy from his manipulations with
the hog's bristles;--all this he enjoys in a semi-recumbent position,
obtained from an easy chair and a high stool, wherein he lies
with a steadiness which courts prolongation--life-like, yet
immoveable--suggesting the idea of an Egyptian corpse newly embalmed.
Never shaving myself more than once a fortnight, and then requiring no
soap and water, and having cut my own hair for nearly twenty years, I
never thought of going through the experiment, which I have since
regretted; for, many a time and oft have I stood, in wonder, gazing at
this strange anomaly of character, and searching in vain for a first
cause. The barber's shop at the St. Nicholas is the most luxurious in
New York, and I believe every room has its own brush, glass, &c.,
similarly numbered in the shop.

The crowning peculiarity of the new hotels is "The Bridal Chamber;" the
want of delicacy that suggested the idea is only equalled by the want of
taste with which it is carried out. Fancy a modest girl, having said
"Yes," and sealed the assertion in the solemn serv