l through the fall, winter, and spring.
In the summer they go to the watering places, so that they pass their
whole lives in hotels. They are mostly persons of wealth and fashion.
As may be supposed, the atmosphere of a hotel is not very favorable to
domestic privacy, and such establishments are vast manufactories of
scandal. People imagine that they are living privately, but their every
action is subject to the inspection and comment of the other inmates of
the house. The hotels are not the safest places for the growth of the
domestic virtues. Indeed, it may be said that they furnish the best
means of destroying them entirely. Neither are they the best place for
the training of children. This last, however, may be a minor
consideration, for the wives who live at the hotels seem, as a rule, to
take care that there shall be no children to need training. Small
families are a necessity at such places, and they remain small in that
atmosphere. If another Asmodeus could look down into the hotels of New
York, he would have some startling revelations to make, which would no
doubt go far to corroborate the gossip one hears in the city concerning
them.

The proprietors of the city hotels are very active in their efforts to
exclude improper characters from their houses, but with all their
vigilance do not always succeed in doing so. One is never certain as to
the respectability of his neighbor at the table, and it is well to be
over-cautious in forming acquaintanceships at such places. Impure women
of the "higher," that is the more successful class, and gamblers, abound
at the hotels. The proprietor cannot turn them out unless they are
notorious, until they commit some overt act, for fear of getting himself
into trouble. As soon, however, as his attention is called to any
improper conduct on their part, they are turned into the street, no
matter at what hour of the day or night.

Hotel proprietors are also the victims of adventurers of both sexes.
These people live from house to house, often changing their names as fast
as they change their quarters, and they are more numerous than is
generally believed. One man who made himself known to the police in this
way, used to take his family, consisting of a wife and three children, to
the hotels, and engage the best rooms. When his bill was presented, he
affected to be extremely busy, and promised to attend to it the next day.
By the next day, however, he had disappeared