an Old-World town, and he some eager historian expecting
reward for his comment upon it. He cast quite a glamour over Rochester,
so that in passing a body of water, bordered by houses, and overlooked
by odd balconies and galleries, and crossed in the distance by a bridge
upon which other houses were built, they boldly declared, being at
their wit's end for a comparison, and taken with the unhoped-for
picturesqueness, that it put them in mind of Verona. Thus they reached
their hotel in almost a spirit of foreign travel, and very willing to
verify the pleasant porter's assurance that they would like it, for
everybody liked it; and it was with a sudden sinking of the heart that
Basil beheld presiding over the register the conventional American
hotel clerk. He was young, he had a neat mustache and well-brushed hair;
jeweled studs sparkled in his shirt-front, and rings on his white hands;
a gentle disdain of the travelling public breathed from his person in
the mystical odors of Ihlang ihlang. He did not lift his haughty head to
look at the wayfarer who meekly wrote his name in the register; he did
not answer him when he begged for a cool room; he turned to the board on
which the keys hung, and, plucking one from it, slid it towards Basil
on the marble counter, touched a bell for a call-boy, whistled a bar of
Offenbach, and as he wrote the number of the room against Basil's name,
said to a friend lounging near him, as if resuming a conversation,
"Well, she's a mighty pooty gul, any way, Chawley!"

When I reflect that this was a type of the hotel clerk throughout the
United States, that behind unnumbered registers at this moment he is
snubbing travellers into the dust, and that they are suffering and
perpetuating him, I am lost in wonder at the national meekness. Not that
I am one to refuse the humble pie his jeweled fingers offer me. Abjectly
I take my key, and creep off up stairs after the call-boy, and try to
give myself the genteel air of one who has not been stepped upon. But I
think homicidal things all the same, and I rejoice that in the safety of
print I can cry out against the despot, whom I have not the presence to
defy. "You vulgar and cruel little soul," I say, and I imagine myself
breathing the words to his teeth, "why do you treat a weary stranger
with this ignominy? I am to pay well for what I get, and I shall not
complain of that. But look at me, and own my humanity; confess by some
civil action, by some decent