omar khay’am, the poet-prophet of persia, writing more than eight hundred years ago, has said:

“in the four parts of the earth are many that are able to write learned books, many that are able to lead armies, and many also that are able to govern kingdoms and empires; but few there be that can keep a hotel.”

a word about the european hotel portier. he is a most admirable invention, a most valuable convenience. he always wears a conspicuous uniform; he can always be found when he is wanted, for he sticks closely to his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke; he speaks from four to ten languages; he is your surest help and refuge in time of trouble or perplexity. he is not the clerk, he is not the landlord; he ranks above the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen. instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home, you go to the portier. it is the pride of our average hotel clerk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride of the portier to know everything. you ask the portier at what hours the trains leave—he tells you instantly; or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what is the hack tariff; or how many children the mayor has; or what days the galleries are open, and whether a permit is required, and where you are to get it, and what you must pay for it; or when the theaters open and close, what the plays are to be, and the price of seats; or what is the newest thing in hats; or how the bills of mortality average; or “who struck billy patterson.” it does not matter what you ask him: in nine cases out of ten he knows, and in the tenth case he will find out for you before you can turn around three times. there is nothing he will not put his hand to. suppose you tell him you wish to go from hamburg to peking by the way of jericho, and are ignorant of routes and prices—the next morning he will hand you a piece of paper with the whole thing worked out on it to the last detail. before you have been long on european soil, you find yourself still saying you are relying on providence, but when you come to look closer you will see that in reality you are relying on the portier. he discovers what is puzzling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is, before you can get the half of it out, and he promptly says, “leave that to me.” consequently, you easily drift into the habit of leaving everything to him. there is a certain embarrassment about applying to the average american hotel clerk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity against rebuff; but you feel no embarrassment in your intercourse with the portier; he receives your propositions with an enthusiasm which cheers, and plunges into their accomplishment with an alacrity which almost inebriates. the more requirements you can pile upon him, the better he likes it. of course the result is that you cease from doing anything for yourself. he calls a hack when you want one; puts you into it; tells the driver whither to take you; receives you like a long-lost child when you return; sends you about your business, does all the quarreling with the hackman himself, and pays him his money out of his own pocket. he sends for your theater tickets, and pays for them; he sends for any possible article you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you will find a subordinate seated with the cab-driver who will put you in your railway compartment, buy your tickets, have your baggage weighed, bring you the printed tags, and tell you everything is in your bill and paid for. at home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing service as this only in the best hotels of our large cities; but in europe you get it in the mere back country-towns just as well.

what is the secret of the portier’s devotion? it is very simple: he gets fees, and no salary. his fee is pretty closely regulated, too. if you stay a week, you give him five marks—a dollar and a quarter, or about eighteen cents a day. if you stay a month, you reduce this average somewhat. if you stay two or three months or longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half. if you stay only one day, you give the portier a mark.

the head waiter’s fee is a shade less than the portier’s; the boots, who not only blacks your boots and brushes your clothes, but is usually the porter and handles your baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than the head waiter; the chambermaid’s fee ranks below that of the boots. you fee only these four, and no one else. a german gentleman told me that when he remained a week in a hotel, he gave the portier five marks, the head waiter four, the boots three, and the chambermaid two; and if he 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 is 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. the apprentice begins at the bottom of the ladder and masters the several grades one after the other. just as in our country printing-offices the apprentice first learns how to sweep out and bring water; then learns to “roll”; then to sort “pi”; then to set type; and finally rounds and completes his education with job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter; then as head waiter, in which position he often has to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier; then as portier. his trade is learned now, and by and by he will assume the style and dignity of landlord, and be found conducting a hotel of his own.

now in europe, the same as in america, when a man has kept a hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years as to give it a great reputation, he has his reward. he can live prosperously on that reputation. he can let his hotel run down to the last degree of shabbiness and yet have it full of people all the time. for instance, there is the hotel de ville, in milan. it swarms with mice and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed it could furnish dirt enough to start another one with. the food would create an insurrection in a poorhouse; and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel makes up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts of trifles—and without making any denials or excuses about it, either. but the hotel de ville’s old excellent reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with travelers who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend to warn them.