If one needs the chambermaid, he presses
the button in his room and a little bell in the hall tinkles furiously
until she responds and shuts it off. In that way one is sure that she
has heard and is coming, a most admirable bit of German ingenuity. If
she happens to be taking her lunch at the time, the bell goes on ringing
until she returns; it is a faithful bell. Coming back to Odell-Carney:
the maid on his floor was making up a room in close proximity when a
most annoying thing happened to her. A porter who had reason to dislike
her came along and turned her key from the outside, locking her in the
room. She couldn't get out, and she had been warned against making a
sound that might disturb the English guest. With rare intelligence, she
did not scream or make an outcry, but wisely proceeded to press the
button for a chambermaid. Then she evidently sat down to wait. To make
the story short, she rang her own call-bell for two hours, no other maid
condescending to notice the call, which speaks volumes for the almost
martial system of the hotel. The bell was opposite the narrator's door.
Is it, therefore, surprising that he required a great deal of time to
tell all that he felt? It was not so much of what he did that he spoke
at such great length, but of what he felt.
"'Pon me soul," he exploded in the end, twisting his mustache with
nervous energy, "it was the demdest nap I ever had.
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