“OH, THANKS!  HOW NICE!  I HAVEN’T SEEN A NEW LAID EGG FOR WEEKS!  HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO GET THEM?  OH, OF COURSE—­YOU’VE GOT AN INCUBATOR!”]

* * * * *

INNS AND OUTS.

NO.  III.—­THE PORTER.

I had intended to have written, this week about “Loggosh”—­including that mysterious canvass hand-box which contains all that a foreigner cares to carry about with him by day, and often pillows him when travelling by night; but the very mention of luggage brings me back to the Porter.  I abominate him.  I am “one who has suffered.”  So here goes!

“Imposing,” best describes the Hotel porter; a very Grand Hotel has at least two of these impositions—­the House Porter and the Omnibus Porter.  The latter you only see twice in your Hotel existence, but he is the most futile and the deadliest fraud of the two.

This Porter is part and parcel of that horrible deep-red-plush nuisance, the Hotel-omnibus.  He and it are inseparables, and make up a sort of Centaur between them.  Once outside the Railway-station, I am besieged by a babel of these Porter-omnibuses—­“Bear Hotel, Sor;” “Grand Hotel, Sor!”—­This, from a very dilapidated specimen, which, on inspection, turns out to be “Grand Hotel Du Lac;” a pirate porter-omnibus in fact; at last I find The Grand Hotel vehicle, and functionary.  The latter is of gigantic stature; quite a “chucker-out;” in a uniform between that of a German bandsman and a Salvation Captain—­“Certinly, Sar.  Dis Grand Hotel; I see your Loggosh, Sar; gif me se empfangschein.”  “Do you speak English?” I retort.—­“Certinly; spik Ingleese—­empfangschein!”—­“Empfangschein” baffles me, and I am about to hand my keys to the monster, when a good-natured Courier explains that it signifies the luggage-receipt.

Away ambles the Porter, leaving me with that orphaned sort of feeling which a luggageless Englishman experiences; it is pouring cats and dogs; I am dead beat; I creep into the dark omnibus.  I find myself quite alone.  I wait impatiently—­a quarter of an hour—­twenty-five minutes—­still no Porter; I am famished; to distract myself, I peer through the door, whence I can discern the messy vista of the railway-station in the rain; it’s lucky I do so; for there I behold my own portmanteau, with its huge purple stripe, being hauled away on the back of a railway-man, followed by an alien Hotel Porter, not mine, doing nothing:  they are always doing nothing.  To rush out indignantly, seize my box, defy the brigands, and carry it back myself, seemed the work of an instant.  Drenched and gasping, I find myself once more outside; the Porter of the Grand Hotel Du Lac is at my heels, furious and impertinent.  “Dis, not your loggosh:  other shentleman’s loggosh.”  He seized the portmanteau, and a struggle would certainly have ensued, when my own Hotel Porter appeared on the scene triumphant, with a regiment of station-men carrying one small tin box.  “What you do, Sar; see here, your loggosh!” The tin box belonged to a commercial-traveller, who was bound for the Hotel Du Lac.