53 YEARS IN JOB.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20280, 14 April 1934, Page 17 (Supplement)

53 YEARS IN JOB.

New York Hotel Clerk’s Reminiscences. OSCAR WILDE IN VELVET. (BY IRA WOLFERT.) “ OSCAR WILDE came into the hotel in 1881, my first day on thejob. I said to rilyself when I went home that night, ‘ It’s a fine job you’ve got for, yourself, Mike Toner, permitting you to see so much that is wonderful in the world.’ ” But in the fifty-three years Michael Toner has spent behind the same, desk at the Hotel Grand, New York, he never did see anything to beat that spectacle of Oscar Wilde demonstrating the unimoprtance of being earnest. ‘ ‘ The door slarrjmed open,” said Mr Toner. “It’s a revolving door rqw, but it wasn’t then. Well, it slammed open, and I looked up from the register to see a huge sunflower in the very prime of condition strut down the lobby. Behind it was a pale young man, with flowing hair. He was dressed in a blue velvet coat and blue velvet knickerbockers, with a frou-froued shirt, and low-cut shoes adorned by silver buckles. A magnificent show he was, all by himself.” For more than half a century Mr Toner has stood behind a desk and let the world come to him. “ There was Henry Ford,” continued Mr Toner, “ dressed like a country parson, pale and serious. He occupied a two-dollar room and was very nice—so nice that I remember feeling sorry he was engaged in such a hazardous occupation as horseless carriages. He gave me a ticket to the first automobile show in 1900 and I went to cluck and shake my head.” One day Andrew Mellon brought his son in, the boy who was destined to become Secretary of the Treasury under three Presidents and one of the world’s richest men. “ Young Andy was in his early twenties and looked exactly like his father used to,” said Mr Toner. “ The old man never smiled, never looked anywhere but straight ahead, and never spoke more than he was compelled to. They were careful tippers and stopped in our five-dollar suites.” At that time, Frank Woolworth was not as fortunate as he was later. He was stowed away on the top floor for one dollar, and then only because his cousin, a steward in the hotel, had wheedled a bargain out of the management. Woolworth couldn’t afford it, but he thought a good address would be good business. “ Very proper and serious, Mr Wool•worth was,” recalls the clerk. “At that time he had invested his last—or first—7oo dollars in an incredible kind of store in Lancaster, Pa., a store where nothing cost more than a dime. He came to New York, I think, to get the capitalists interested. “He left a call one morning for eight o’clock. At 6.30 he sent down*to

make sure it wasn’t eight yet. He said he thought his watch might be slow. At 7 o’clock he was in the lobby, making anxious inquiries about the best means of getting downtown. He sat down with a newspaper, but he was on the anxious seat good and sure. And in a few minutes he smiled apologetically at me and started out for his ten o’clock appointment. It must have been mighty important, and I hope it turned out well. I guess it did. Frank Woolworth wasn’t much like Major John Calif., who was at Fort Sumter the day the Secessionists fired upon it. It has always been assumed in this hotel that the Major fired the first Union shot of the war, but when the Major slept it took the crack of doom to awaken him. He left a call for nine o’clock once, and when nine came and went the only response to the bellboy’s knocking was a weak grunt. I tied a feather duster to a window-pole, being a young man then, climbed on a chair and poked it through the transom. I tickled him j until I saw his eyes open slowly. Then I scooted. “In fifteen minutes the officer was down in the lobby thundering like the guns before Antietam. He lectured us for not awakening him on time,” said Mt Toner. “* I had to get up myself,’ he roared. ‘ Fortunately for me I have a sense of time. When I decide to get. up at a certain hour, my mind automatically awakes me.’ “ The late J. Ogden Armour, the meat packer,” Mr Toner said, “ insisted that his straw hat had been taken from his room. He threatened to file a claim against the hotel. The uproar grew until his daughter admitted she had taken it because he had been wearing it twelve years, and she had grown tired of seeing it. She returned the hat, and he continued to wear it for twelve more years, I guess.” This was the hotel to which a young lieutenant named John J. Pershing would go when down from West Point for an evening’s pleasure. Not much of a tipper, but we all understood why. They kept the army lads on slim rations. “The best tipper I ever knew? Well, Queen Lilioukalani. Hawaii’s last native ruler, was up there near the top. Her name meant Lily of Heaven, and everybody here was willing to concede that it was true. We all enjoyed her stay mightily.” And as for Mr Toner, while the world strode in and out of his hotel, he was very busy keeping his job under ten proprietors, raising nine children and being married for forty-two years “ to the very same wife.” (Copyright, 1934, by the N.A.N.A., Inc.)