Small Home Gazette, Fall 2017
A Nod to Giving Thanks…
Gathering the Harvest
There are almost as many nice things to steal from a hotel room as there ever were. To be sure, the cakes of soap are smaller than they were before the war, but the towels are just as slippery as ever. This is one of the indoor sports that has not been seriously interfered with by the great conflict, and as a great Christian nation, we ought to be thankful that we can still clean out a hotel room of yore.
How few people are really thorough in doing a thing of this kind though. They go away the next morning with a feeling that nothing has been overlooked. Standing in the middle of the floor, they panoram the room with an appraising eye. “Well, I guess we haven’t forgotten anything,” they say, and then go out and leave a perfectly good rug on the floor. One should be efficient in these things.
What a lot of things there are to gather in a hotel room, when one stops to think of it! The writing paper, for instance. You hate to write letters usually. But on pulling out the single drawer in the table, you behold a nice pile of stationery, with a picture of the hotel in the corner and the number of baths there are in it. So you drag this out and write the following: “Having a wonderful time. Love to all.” If there is any paper left over, it goes into the bottom of the bag so it will lie flat.
Match safes were pocket-sized containers, designed to prevent early matches (made with phosphorus) from igniting unexpectedly. They were made in silver and other metals as well as porcelain. Match safes were often given out as advertising premiums.
Then there are the match safes, china ones. These don’t take up much room and you might as well take them along. They come in so handy at Christmas time.
The enameled trays give a lot of bother unless you have a large suit case. They are too long to go in an ordinary bag. But one can not leave them. They have such pretty pictures of somebody’s beer on them. Anybody with any love of art at all can make sacrifices—and lug along a big suit case.
The water pitcher can be arranged for traveling very nicely, along with the glass. Wrap the glass in one of the lace curtains which can be readily removed from the window and then stuff it inside the pitcher. It will ride well, you will find. The other lace curtain can be wrapped around the soap dish, which can be coaxed to come along with the aid of a screw driver.
The soap and towels come last. Too bad the towels have the name of the hotel embroidered on the corner. It will take half an hour to pick it out with a sharp knife when you get home. Hotels are so thoughtless; they never care how much work they make for anybody.
Well, I guess we’ve got everything now but the Gideon Bible.
