HOTEL MEMORY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XIV, 2 April 1898, Page 430

HOTEL MEMORY.

Some one who has occasion to travel much says that he has been making a special study of hotel clerks’ memory for names ami faces, two things which people in general find it peculiarly easy to forget. No doubt it is true that most travelling men feel their personal vanity pleasantly excited when they enter a big hotel after an absence of months, or even of years, ami are at once welcomed by name by the smiling man behind the counter. Clerks who can greet guests in this flattering manner must be of great value to their employers. As illustrating how wonderful their power is, our ‘ special student ’ relates one of his own experiences. When the Knights Templar conclave was held in San Francisco in 1883, I landed in that city early one afternoon with a party of Eastern knights who had made the journey across the continent in a special train. More than four hundred of us went to the Palace Hotel. As rapidly as possible we tiled up to the register, inscritad our names, and were sent to our respective rooms under the guidance of bell-boys. I look a bath, changed my linen, and in the course of an hour or two strolled down to the office to see if there was any mail for me. 1 approached the desk, but before I had time to utter a word Mr Clerk nodded to me, and with apparent solicitude inquired : • How do you like your room, Mr Burton? Does 306 suit you?’ I was dumbfounded. This man had never seen me tafore in his life, except for the half-minute I had stood tafore him while writing my name in the register. Fully four hundred and twenty-five persons had passed him within two hours, and yet he was able without the slightest hesitation to rememlier my name and the number of my room. There is nothing out of the ordinary’ in my appearance, and I could not imagine how he could recollect me. To satisfy myself that my own case was not an exception, I lounged ataut the office for an hour or so ; and I hope to be deprived of all my rights as a citizen of the United States if I didn’t hear that wonderful clerk call by name fifty of my acquaintances—not one of whom iiad ever been in San Francisco liefore—anil ask them the same question he had asked me.