They knew none of the hotels in Rochester, and they had chosen a certain one in reliance upon their handbook.  When they named it, there stepped forth a porter of an incredibly cordial and pleasant countenance, who took their travelling-bags, and led them to the omnibus.  As they were his only passengers, the porter got inside with them, and seeing their interest in the streets through which they rode, he descanted in a strain of cheerful pride upon the city’s prosperity and character, and gave the names of the people who lived in the finer houses, just as if it had been an Old-World town, and he some eager historian expecting reward for his comment upon it.  He cast quite a glamour over Rochester, so that in passing a body of water, bordered by houses, and overlooked by odd balconies and galleries, and crossed in the distance by a bridge upon which other houses were built, they boldly declared, being at their wit’s end for a comparison, and taken with the unhoped-for picturesqueness, that it put them in mind of Verona.  Thus they reached their hotel in almost a spirit of foreign travel, and very willing to verify the pleasant porter’s assurance that they would like it, for everybody liked it; and it was with a sudden sinking of the heart that Basil beheld presiding over the register the conventional American hotel clerk.  He was young, he had a neat mustache and well-brushed hair; jeweled studs sparkled in his shirt-front, and rings on his white hands; a gentle disdain of the travelling public breathed from his person in the mystical odors of Ihlang ihlang.  He did not lift his haughty head to look at the wayfarer who meekly wrote his name in the register; he did not answer him when he begged for a cool room; he turned to the board on which the keys hung, and, plucking one from it, slid it towards Basil on the marble counter, touched a bell for a call-boy, whistled a bar of Offenbach, and as he wrote the number of the room against Basil’s name, said to a friend lounging near him, as if resuming a conversation, “Well, she’s a mighty pooty gul, any way, Chawley!”

When I reflect that this was a type of the hotel clerk throughout the United States, that behind unnumbered registers at this moment he is snubbing travellers into the dust, and that they are suffering and perpetuating him, I am lost in wonder at the national meekness.  Not that I am one to refuse the humble pie his jeweled fingers offer me.  Abjectly I take my key, and creep off up stairs after the call-boy, and try to give myself the genteel air of one who has not been stepped upon.  But I think homicidal things all the same, and I rejoice that in the safety of print I can cry out against the despot, whom I have not the presence to defy.  “You vulgar and cruel little soul,” I say, and I imagine myself breathing the words to his teeth, “why do you treat a weary stranger with this ignominy?  I am to pay well for what I get, and I shall not complain of that.  But look at me, and own my humanity; confess by some civil action, by some decent phrase, that I have rights and that they shall be respected.  Answer my proper questions; respond to my fair demands.  Do not slide my key at me; do not deny me the poor politeness of a nod as you give it in my hand.  I am not your equal; few men are; but I shall not presume upon your clemency.  Come, I also am human!”