I strive, perhaps in vain, to impart a sense of the slowly creeping
desolation, the gradual paresis, that was seizing upon the late full
and happy life of our hotel; and I have not strictly observed the order
of the successive events. I have not spoken of the swift evanescence
of the bell-boys, the first of whom began so jubilantly with me when I
came, covenanting to deliver a pitcher of ice-water at my door every
morning at ten, and every evening at eight. He was faithful to his
trust, and embarrassed me with a superfluity of ice-water, which ten
men could hardly have drunk, and lived; but when the economic frame
of our hotel began to be shaken, he was early in warning me that he
might go at any moment. He was No. 18, but he promised me that No. 10
would see that I was daily and nightly deluged with ice-water, and
No. 10 was exemplarily true to me for a day. Then he vanished too,
with a grateful sense, I hope, of my folly in bestowing a preliminary
half-dollar upon him. But he had made interest for me, I found, with
No. 4, and No. 4 deluded me by his fleeting permanency for a week. One
morning he told me he was going, and he took a last half-dollar from me
with a true compassion for my forlorn case. He was so visibly the last
of the bell-boys that he could not assign me to a lower number. For one
night the head porter brought my ice-water. Now the night porter brings
it, and if he should leave before I do-- But I will not anticipate,
as the older romancers used to say. I will not look forward, even in
the case of the chambermaids, of whom there have been already three
changes, with the prospect next week of having in some of the laundry
girls to do up the work.