idea of music.  It opened without warning.  The men composing the band of brass must have stolen silently into the alley about the sleeping hotel, and burst into the clamor of a rattling quickstep, on purpose.  The horrible sound thus suddenly let loose had no chance of escape; it bounded back from wall to wall, like the clapping of boards in a tunnel, rattling windows and stunning all cars, in a vain attempt to get out over the roofs.  But such music does not go up.  What could have been the intention of this assault we could not conjecture.  It was a time of profound peace through the country; we had ordered no spontaneous serenade, if it was a serenade.  Perhaps the Boston bands have that habit of going into an alley and disciplining their nerves by letting out a tune too big for the alley, and taking the shock of its reverberation.  It may be well enough for the band, but many a poor sinner in the hotel that night must have thought the judgment day had sprung upon him.  Perhaps the band had some remorse, for by and by it leaked out of the alley, in humble, apologetic retreat, as if somebody had thrown something at it from the sixth-story window, softly breathing as it retired the notes of “Fair Harvard.”

The band had scarcely departed for some other haunt of slumber and weariness, when the notes of singing floated up that prolific alley, like the sweet tenor voice of one bewailing the prohibitory movement; and for an hour or more a succession of young bacchanals, who were evidently wandering about in search of the Maine Law, lifted up their voices in song.  Boston seems to be full of good singers; but they will ruin their voices by this night exercise, and so the city will cease to be attractive to travelers who would like to sleep there.  But this entertainment did not last the night out.

It stopped just before the hotel porter began to come around to rouse the travelers who had said the night before that they wanted to be awakened.  In all well-regulated hotels this process begins at two o’clock and keeps up till seven.  If the porter is at all faithful, he wakes up everybody in the house; if he is a shirk, he only rouses the wrong people.  We treated the pounding of the porter on our door with silent contempt.  At the next door he had better luck.  Pound, pound.  An angry voice, “What do you want?”

“Time to take the train, sir.”

“Not going to take any train.”

“Ain’t your name Smith?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Smith”—­

“I left no order to be called.” (Indistinct grumbling from Smith’s room.)

Porter is heard shuffling slowly off down the passage.  In a little while he returns to Smith’s door, evidently not satisfied in his mind.  Rap, rap, rap!

“Well, what now?”

“What’s your initials?  A. T.; clear out!”

And the porter shambles away again in his slippers, grumbling something about a mistake.  The idea of waking a man up in the middle of the night to ask him his “initials” was ridiculous enough to banish sleep for another hour.  A person named Smith, when he travels, should leave his initials outside the door with his boots.