Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1919 — WHY HE QUIT “THE ROAD” [ARTICLE]

WHY HE QUIT “THE ROAD”

Ex- Drummer Voices Regret for the Disappearance of Oldtime Boniface and Clerk. “Oh for the old-fashioned hotel clerk, smlliry;, accommodating, always friendly, who never forgot a face, obliging and always making a fellow feel like- he was at home,” said Frank Whitsell of Portland, Ore., according to the El Paso Herald. “What a difference between the old professional hotel clerks of 25 years ago, even up to 15 years ago, and the automatic, mechanical clerks whe never try to oblige—l might call them automatic grouches—of the present day behind the hotel registers. If you ask one of them, ji question he or she, nowadays, intimates that you get your room and meals, just exactly what you pay for. and not a thing more, please understand that. I was a commercial traveler for a quarter century up. to six years ago, and I know. Why, we old drummers, as they used to call us. ‘ felt at home in those old hostelries of the western states, just on account of the clerks. Say. they were God’s noblemen, those old-timers. They seemed to anticipate a fellow’s wants and would go to all sorts of trouble to accommodate one. The milk of human kindness flowed In their hearts. And it made business, too. I have stopped at an inferior house, many a time, because I had been treated so well by the clerk. And I can say, too, the proprietors were much the same way in those days. Hotels were made homelike, not a big box with compartments, where you are to be tucked away at so much per. That was one of the reasons I quit the road, the; chilly, purely mechanical hotels of the present day.”