, furnished more luxuriously
and looking down on the moving mobs beneath. No one is allowed on this
floor except the guests or clients of the hotel. As I have been one of
them myself, I trust it is not unsympathetic to compare them to active
anthropoids who can climb trees, and so look down in safety on the herds
or packs of wilder animals wandering and prowling below. Of course there
are modifications of this architectural plan, but they are generally
approximations to it; it is the plan that seems to suit the social life
of the American cities. There is generally something like a ground floor
that is more public, a half-floor or gallery above that is more private,
and above that the bulk of the block of bedrooms, the huge hive with its
innumerable and identical cells.

The ladder of ascent in this tower is of course the lift, or, as it is
called, the elevator. With all that we hear of American hustle and
hurry it is rather strange that Americans seem to like more than we do
to linger upon long words. And indeed there is an element of delay in
their diction and spirit, very little understood, which I may discuss
elsewhere. Anyhow they say elevator when we say lift, just as they say
automobile when we say motor and stenographer when we say typist, or
sometimes (by a slight confusion) typewriter. Which reminds me of
another story that never existed, about a man who was accused of having
murdered and dismembered his secretary when he had only taken his typing
machine to pieces; but we must not dwell on these digressions. The
Americans may have another reason for giving long and ceremonious titles
to the lift. When first I came among them I had a suspicion that they
possessed and practised a new and secret religion, which was the cult of
the elevator. I fancied they worshipped the lift, or at any rate
worshipped in the lift. The details or data of this suspicion it were
now vain to collect, as I have regretfully abandoned it, except in so
far as they illustrate the social principles underlying the structural
plan of the building. Now an American gentleman invariably takes off his
hat in the lift. He does not take off his hat in the hotel, even if it
is crowded with ladies. But he always so salutes a lady in the elevator;
and this marks the difference of atmosphere. The lift is a room, but the
hotel is a street. But during my first delusion, of course, I assumed
that he uncovered in this tiny temple merely because he was in