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.