“That’s a fact.  I’m right with you.  It’s a first-class place.”

“Yuh, but say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Rippleton, in Chicago?  I don’t want to knock—­I believe in boosting wherever you can—­but say, of all the rotten dumps that pass ’emselves off as first-class hotels, that’s the worst.  I’m going to get those guys, one of these days, and I told ’em so.  You know how I am—­well, maybe you don’t know, but I’m accustomed to first-class accommodations, and I’m perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price.  I got into Chicago late the other night, and the Rippleton’s near the station—­I’d never been there before, but I says to the taxi-driver—­I always believe in taking a taxi when you get in late; may cost a little more money, but, gosh, it’s worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot of crabs—­and I said to him, ‘Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.’

“Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said to the clerk, ‘Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for Cousin Bill?’ Saaaay!  You’d ‘a’ thought I’d sold him a second, or asked him to work on Yom Kippur!  He hands me the cold-boiled stare and yaps, ’I dunno, friend, I’ll see,’ and he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the rooms on.  Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and the American Security League to see if I was all right—­he certainly took long enough—­or maybe he just went to sleep; but finally he comes out and looks at me like it hurts him, and croaks, ’I think I can let you have a room with bath.’  ’Well, that’s awful nice of you—­sorry to trouble you—­how much ‘ll it set me back?’ I says, real sweet.  ’It’ll cost you seven bucks a day, friend,’ he says.

“Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my expense-account—­gosh, if I’d been paying it instead of the firm, I’d ‘a’ tramped the streets all night before I’d ‘a’ let any hick tavern stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me!  So I lets it go at that.  Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bell hop—­fine lad—­not a day over seventy-nine years old—­fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and doesn’t know it’s over yet—­thought I was one of the Confederates, I guess, from the way he looked at me—­and Rip van Winkle took me up to something—­I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I thought there’d been some mistake—­I thought they were putting me in the Salvation Army collection-box!  At seven per each and every diem!  Gosh!”

“Yuh, I’ve heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy.  Now, when I go to Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle—­first-class places.”

“Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute?  How is it?”

“Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel.”

(Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend, Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and Moose Jaw.)