Abroad Again Author:Curtis Guild Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 46 EVERY ONE TO HIS CALLING. own hotel-tables, will appreciate the annoyance of this circumlocution, and can imagine what a hurrying to and fro, and tremendou... more »s fuss generally, there is at the usual dining- hour. An amusing illustration I must relate, of the utter ignorance of an English employe' of any detail of business outside of his own particular department, although the fact is frequently commented on by Americans. One would suppose that the clerk in this Great Northwestern Railway Hotel, whose duty it was to register each guest's name on arrival, assign him a room, and receive payment on departure, would insensibly acquire, from the very fact of observing arrivals and departures of guests, a knowledge of the hours of arrival and departure of trains, and more especially as her constant position (the clerk was a woman) was within a dozen feet of the great entrance-door of the hotel into the station. But no ; it was not her business to know, and she really knew nothing of the matter, as appeared by the following dialogue : "At what hour does the train from Chester arrive ? " " If you ask the porter, he will tell you." " But the porter is not here at present. Don't you know whether there are any trains that arrive in the forenoon F " "I'm sure I can't tell you; for trains be coming and going all day, and my business is to take travellers' names on the book, and assign them rooms. It is the porter as knows the trains' time." " But the incoming trains stop within a dozen rods of where you stand, and the travellers coming to the hotel from them come first directly to you ; you surely recollect whether you are accustomed to see any from Chester by morning trains." " Beg your pardon, I never took notice when they come. I knows there is gentlemen from Chester c...« less