An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 69 way, and so render life worth living to the well disposed. The grumbler can go elsewhere, and be banged to him. He shall not stay and grumble here without having something to grumble about. If he dislikes his eggs bard and makes a n undue fuss about it one morning, he shall be able to play tennis with them the next morning. If be complains his steak is underdone one morning, he shall have it raw the next, and so on until be goes, and we others are well rid of him. Anyone who annoys (as one prominent person of note used to annoy) others by his offensive and beastly conversa– tion in any public room, will have to go as be went. In half R dozen words I have tried and shall keep on trying to make people as comfortable as I want to be myself and if they don't appreciate it, I shall leave off when I have lost a certain amount (well defined in my own mind) of money. Minor sins of other hotel owners I seek to eschew. I have myself often groaned under the extortion of sixpence for a pint of beer or a bottle of soda water, when two-thirds of that price renders one a handsome, I may say extortionate, profit. So when I came into power here these ship money sort of taxes were promptly abolished, so were the compulsory taxes on cleanliness. There were no bath rooms here till I put them in the other day, but the persons who suffered by their absence were, as in most hotels, taxed for the lanctlord's omission by being charged for baths in their bed rooms. This is a grievance no longer in existence here at all events. The Machiavellian policy of sen<ling up an early and g ratuitous cup of tea (which perhaps cost me a p enny) to all comers free of charge with their hot water is I venture to think, a stroke of genius which <leserves a return in much g ratuitous advertisement by the customers. On the sin for charging exorbitant prices for wines there is no need to say anything. From the customer's side all I can say is that in the ol<l days here one used to slake one's thirst with beer in the house, and get one's wine elsewhere. From the short experience I have bad here I see my customers don't do this now. Si11gularly enough I am satisfied with what in other business would be thought an outrageous profit, and want no more. This, I think, is all I have to say, so I will now close what is in effect a statement of policy." Luckily obtaining a first-class manager and cook in Mr. F. B. Pomeroy, my speculation, though it was a very bold-not to say rash-one, was very successful, and we soon doubled and trebled the takings, and had it not been for the iniquitous decision in Sharpe v. Wakefield mentioned hereafter, I should probably still be a quasi-Boniface. In June, the Thames Hare and Hounds hired an enclosure on the Mound at Stamford Bridge, which succeeded very well as a "Thames Tent," about 170