The Hotel

The long resounding marble corridors, the

shining parlors with shining women in

them.

The French room, with its gilt and garlands

under plump little tumbling painted loves'.

The Turkish room, with its jumble of many

carpets and its stiffly squared un-Turkish

chairs.

The English room, all heavy crimson and gold,

with spreading palms lifted high in round

green tubs.

The electric lights in twos and threes and hundreds,

made into festoons and spirals and

arabesques, a maze and magic of bright

persistent radiance.

The people sitting in corners by twos and

threes, and cooing together under the glare.

The long rows of silent people in chairs, watching

with eyes that see not while the patient

band tangles the air with music.

The bell-boys marching in with cards, and

shouting names over and over into ears

that do not heed.

The stout and gorgeous dowagers in lacy white

and lilac, bedizened with many jewels, with

smart little scarlet or azure hats on their

gray-streaked hair.

The business men in trim and spotless suits,

who walk in and out with eager steps, or

sit at the desks and tables, or watch the

shining women.

The telephone girls forever listening to far

voices, with the silver band over their hair

and the little black caps obliterating their

ears.

The telegraph tickers sounding their perpetual

chit—chit-chit from the uttermost ends of

the earth.

The waiters, in black swallow-tails and white

aprons, passing here and there with trays

of bottles and glasses.

The quiet and sumptuous bar-room, with purplish

men softly drinking in little alcoves,

while the bar-keeper, mixing bright liquors,

is rapidly plying his bottles.

The great bedecked and gilded café, with its

glitter of a thousand mirrors, with its little

white tables bearing gluttonous dishes

whereto bright forks, held by pampered

hands, flicker daintily back and forth.

The white-tiled, immaculate kitchen, with many

little round blue fires, where white-clad

cooks are making spiced and flavored

dishes.

The cool cellars filled with meats and fruits, or

layered with sealed and bottled wines

mellowing softly in the darkness.

The invisible stories of furnaces and machines,

burrowing deep down into the earth, where

grimy workmen are heavily laboring.

The many-windowed stories of little homes and

shelters and sleeping-places, reaching up

into the night like some miraculous,

highpiled honeycomb of wax-white cells.

The clothes inside of the cells—the stuffs, the

silks, the laces; the elaborate delicate

disguises that wait in trunks and drawers and

closets, or bedrape and conceal human flesh.

The people inside of the clothes, the bodies

white and young, bodies fat and bulging,

bodies wrinkled and wan, all alike veiled

by fine fabrics, sheltered by walls and

roofs, shut in from the sun and stars.

The souls inside of the bodies—the naked souls;

souls weazened and weak, or proud and

brave; all imprisoned in flesh, wrapped in

woven stuffs, enclosed in thick and painted

masonry, shut away with many shadows

from the shining truth.

God inside of the souls, God veiled and wrapped

and imprisoned and shadowed in fold on

fold of flesh and fabrics and mockeries; but

ever alive, struggling and rising again,

seeking the light, freeing the world.