A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

stayed three months he divided ninety marks among them,

in about the above proportions. Ninety marks make

$22.50.

None of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel,

though it be a year–except one of these four servants

should go away in the mean time; in that case he will

be sure to come and bid you good-by and give you the

opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him.

It is considered very bad policy to fee a servant while you

are still to remain longer in the hotel, because if you

gave him too little he might neglect you afterward,

and if you gave him too much he might neglect somebody

else to attend to you. It is considered best to keep his

expectations “on a string” until your stay in concluded.

I do not know whether hotel servants in New York get any

wages or not, but I do know that in some of the hotels there

the feeing system in vogue is a heavy burden. The waiter

expects a quarter at breakfast–and gets it. You have

a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets a quarter.

Your waiter at dinner is another stranger–consequently

he gets a quarter. The boy who carries your satchel

to your room and lights your gas fumbles around and hangs

around significantly, and you fee him to get rid of him.

Now you may ring for ice-water; and ten minutes later

for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar;

and by and by for a newspaper–and what is the result? Why,

a new boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled

around until you have paid him something. Suppose you

boldly put your foot down, and say it is the hotel’s

business to pay its servants? You will have to ring your

bell ten or fifteen times before you get a servant there;

and when he goes off to fill your order you will grow old

and infirm before you see him again. You may struggle nobly

for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an adamantine

sort of person, but in the mean time you will have been

so wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will

haul down your colors, and go to impoverishing yourself

with fees.

It seems to me that it would be a happy idea to import

the European feeing system into America. I believe it

would result in getting even the bells of the Philadelphia

hotels answered, and cheerful service rendered.

The greatest American hotels keep a number of clerks

and a cashier, and pay them salaries which mount up

to a considerable total in the course of a year.

The great continental hotels keep a cashier on a trifling

salary, and a portier WHO PAYS THE HOTEL A SALARY.

By the latter system both the hotel and the public

save money and are better served than by our system.

One of our consuls told me that a portier of a great Berlin

hotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position,

and yet cleared six thousand dollars for himself.

The position of portier in the chief hotels of Saratoga,

Long Branch, New York, and similar centers of resort,

would be one which the holder could afford to pay even more

than five thousand dollars for, perhaps.

When we borrowed the feeing fashion from Europe a dozen

years ago, the salary system ought to have been discontinued,

of course. We might make this correction now, I should think.

And we might add the portier, too. Since I first began

to study the portier, I have had opportunities to observe

him in the chief cities of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy;

and the more I have seen of him the more I have wished

that he might be adopted in America, and become there,

as he is in Europe, the stranger’s guardian angel.

Yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just

as true today: “Few there be that can keep a hotel.”

Perhaps it is because the landlords and their subordinates

have in too many cases taken up their trade without first

learning it. In Europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught.