Last Days in a Dutch Hotel | Page 9

of the great dining-room assembled,

and the chairs inverted on them with their legs in the air; but decently,
decorously, not with the reckless abandon displayed by the chairs in
our Long Island hotel for weeks before it closed. In the smaller
dining-room the table was set for lunch as if we were to go on dining
there forever; in the breakfast-room the service and the provision were
as perfect as ever. The coffee was good, the bread delicious, the butter
of an unfaltering sweetness; and the glaze of wear on the polished
dress-coats of the waiters as respectable as it could have been on the
first day of the season. All was correct, and if of a funereal correctness
to me, I am sure this effect was purely subjective.
The little bell-boys in sailor suits (perhaps they ought to be spelled
bell-buoys) clustered about the elevator-boy like so many Roman
sentinels at their posts; the elevator-boy and his elevator were ready to
take us up or down at any moment.
The portier and I ignored together the hour of parting, which we had
definitely ascertained and agreed upon, and we exchanged some
compliments to the weather, which is now settled, as if we expected to
enjoy it long together. I rather dread going in to lunch, however, for I
fear the empty places.

VIII.
All is over; we are off. The lunch was an heroic effort of the hotel to
hide the fact of our separation. It was perfect, unless the boiled beef
was a confession of human weakness; but even this boiled beef was
exquisite, and the horseradish that went with it was so mellowed by art
that it checked rather than provoked the parting tear. The table d'hote
had reserved a final surprise for us; and when we sat down with the fear
of nothing but German around us, we heard the sound of our own
speech from the pleasantest English pair we had yet encountered; and
the travelling English are pleasant; I will say it, who am said by Sir
Walter Besant to be the only American who hates their nation. It was
really an added pang to go, on their account, but the carriage was
waiting at the door; the 'domestique' had already carried our baggage to
the steam-tram station; the kindly menial train formed around us for an
ultimate 'douceur', and we were off, after the 'portier' had shut us into
our vehicle and touched his oft-touched cap for the last time, while the
hotel facade dissembled its grief by architecturally smiling in the soft

Dutch sun.
I liked this manner of leaving better than carrying part of my own
baggage to the train, as I had to do on Long Island, though that, too,
had its charm; the charm of the whole fresh, pungent American life,
which at this distance is so dear.

End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Last Days in a Dutch Hotel by
William Dean Howells

Last Days in a Dutch Hotel

from http://www.dertz.in/