Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE commercial room is usually the most cosy room in the hotel, the landlord knowing full well that no class of his visitors will repay him more readily for any extra outlay than his commercial friends. There was a time when the traveller used to think a great deal more of the landlord's interests than of his own ; but competition, as we shall presently see, has changed all this, as it has changed many other phases of commercial life. When I first travelled I was a driver, and after a hard day's work and a long drive, next to your own home, no more pleasant sight could greet one's eye than the commercial room with its cheerful fire and more cheerful faces, always ready to welcome you warmly, be you friend or stranger, so long as you carry the indispensable credentials of a commercial traveller — an order-book, a writingcase, and a " Good evening, gentlemen," as you enter the room. But woe to the w-commercial traveller, who is quickly known (as militiamen are known from the regulars) by his gait, uneasy appearance, and general awkwardness. He is quickly relegated to the icy coldness, stiff formalities, and higher tariff of the coffee-room. The cosiness and comfort of the commercial room in the old-fashioned hotel are by no means due to its architectural form, its size, ventilation, or adaptation to its special purposes—most of them having none of these requisites —but to its associations, to the jolly fellows one has met so many times, and to the general desire to make each other as happy as possible without any written rules, regulations, badges, or pass-words. In the commercial room there is perfect liberty without license, absolute order without the slightest show of force ; there is a kind of freemasonry handed down by the saddle-bagmen to- the drivers, and from ...