Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/13

Rh the cooking-school, where nice work is done for the Capitol table.

The chief business is keeping hotel. The contracts for this, as was said, are sold by the government every Saturday evening. The Waldorf is the swell hotel of the place. Only capitalists and high officials can pay four dollars a day for lodgings. The Waldorf is over the post-office and bank. It has a sitting-room under the ridge pole, and bedrooms on each side, where each lodger has his own tin washbasin. Not every one can realize what a degree of luxury this implies. Dover, to be sure, has an office in the courthouse, which is also his bedroom. But Dover, as every citizen remarks, has "money to burn." The Hotel Elmira, the girls' dormitory, is a loft over the cooking and millinery girls' parlor, and is naturally valuable property. The other hotels are but long shelter tents covering two rows of wire-bottomed cots, where beds are from ten to twenty cents a night. The concessions vary according to the accommodations, but each is an active and profitable business accordingly as it is managed. Ethel Moore, who conducted the Hotel Elmira during the crisis, lost money. She exhibited a collection of promissory notes from out of a heterogeneous pocket.

"I can't ever collect them without going to law," she said. "Neither Dover nor Smith will look at a case for less than ten dollars."

The next week I observed that Katy Monaghan, who was half partner in the Hotel Elmira, collected the money from the beds each night, and frequently loud and vain were the cries.

"An' ye'll pay me ye're twenty cents or ye'll git up, Bertha Rose."

"But I can't, Katy. I've only earned forty cents to-day, and I spent the last cent on my supper."

"I seen ye eatin' caramels three times to-day."

"Callaghan give them to me."

"Oh, oh," chorused the surrounding beds.

The evidence seemed to show that Bertha had bought the caramels. This brought out a great deal of truly superior morality, mingled with much personal comment.

"You never can believe Bertha, girls. Why, she says that they have a glass door in their parlor, and Josie says she was there onct, and they hain't got but one room."

The conversation was here transferred to town, mixed up with accounts of the prowess of the Eighty-seventh Street boys, who could "clean out the whole gang." This occasioned so much uproar, that the night policeman called up that he would arrest everybody engaged if they didn't shut up. This he could have done, for one of the laws of the young Republic is that citizens shall be quiet after ten o'clock.

Bertha was now in tears, so some of the softer-hearted girls made up the twenty cents, and peace at length descended on the Hotel Elmira.

Katy Monaghan, when questioned the next morning in the spirit of inquiry, said business was business, and she had a note in bank of her own to pay.

On their part, the proprietors are bound to keep the beds clean and the hotel in order. The boarders are no more expected to make their own beds than they would be in the hotels of the metropolis. Katy Monaghan had a partner, and the two, with rolled-up sleeves, were at it early to get in order before the inspectors of the Board of Health made their daily rounds.