about in profusion; the human species of every kind may be seen variously occupied—­groups talking, others roasting over the stove, many cracking peanuts, many more smoking, and making the pavement, by their united labours, an uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells, varied occasionally with cigar ashes and discarded stumps.  Here and there you see a pair of Wellington-booted legs dangling over the back of one chair, while the owner thereof is supporting his centre of gravity on another.  One feature is common to them all—­busy-ness; whether they are talking, or reading, or cracking nuts, a peculiar energy shows the mind is working.  Further inside is the counter for the clerks who appoint the rooms to the travellers, as they enter their names in a book; on long stools close by is the corps of servants, while in full sight of all stands the “Annunciator,” that invaluable specimen of American mechanical ingenuity, by which, if any bell is pulled in any room, one loud stroke is heard, and the number of the room disclosed, in which state it remains until replaced; so that if everybody had left the hall, the first person returning would see at once what bells had been rung during his absence, and the numbers of the rooms they belonged to.  Why this admirable contrivance has not been introduced into this country, I cannot conceive.

The bar is one of the most—­if not the most—­important departments in the hotel; comparatively nothing is drunk at dinner, but the moment the meal is over, the bar becomes assailed by applicants; moreover, from morning to midnight, there is a continuous succession of customers; not merely the lodgers and their friends, but any parties passing along the street, who feel disposed, walk into the bar of any hotel, and get “a drink.”  The money taken at a popular bar in the course of a day is, I believe, perfectly fabulous.

Scarcely less important than the bar is the barber’s shop.  Nothing struck me more forcibly than an American under the razor or brush:  in any and every other circumstance of life full of activity and energy, under the razor or brush he is the picture of indolence and helplessness.  Indifferent usually to luxury, he here exhausts his ingenuity to obtain it; shrinking usually from the touch of a nigger as from the venomed tooth of a serpent, he here is seen resigning his nose to the digital custody of that sable operator, and placing his throat at his mercy, or revelling in titillary ecstasy from his manipulations with the hog’s bristles;—­all this he enjoys in a semi-recumbent position, obtained from an easy chair and a high stool, wherein he lies with a steadiness which courts prolongation—­life-like, yet immoveable—­suggesting the idea of an Egyptian corpse newly embalmed.  Never shaving myself more than once a fortnight, and then requiring no soap and water, and having cut my own hair for nearly twenty years, I never thought of going through the experiment, which I have since regretted; for, many a time and oft have I stood, in wonder, gazing at this strange anomaly of character, and searching in vain for a first cause.  The barber’s shop at the St. Nicholas is the most luxurious in New York, and I believe every room has its own brush, glass, &c., similarly numbered in the shop.