"I have
forgotten the pass-word," said Mr. McKinley, "but if you will look at
me you will see that I am the President." "If you were George Dewey
himself," was the reply, "you shouldn't get by here without the
pass-word." This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it is
aptly brought up to date.[B]
We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a cross-town car, and are
presently pushing at the revolving doors--a draught-excluding
plate-glass turn-stile--of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious and
labyrinthine. A short colloquy with the clerk at the bureau, and we find
ourselves in a gorgeously upholstered elevator, whizzing aloft to the
thirteenth floor. Not the top floor--far from it. If you could slice off
the stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top of an egg,
and plant them down in Europe, they would of themselves make a biggish
hotel according to our standards. This first elevator voyage is the
prelude to how many others! For the past week I seem to have spent the
best part of my time in elevators. I must have travelled miles on miles
at right angles to the earth's surface. If all my ascensions could be
put together, they would out-top Olympus and make Ossa a wart.
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