Yet it had been the passionate pilgrimage he had prayed for.
He would not forget hotel terraces looking on the Alps and the Bay of Naples, nor the salmon at Macon, nor the boiled beef with Schnittlauch sauce at Madame Sacher's. But he privately jigged as he steamed toward his own native varieties of poetry--toward American elevators and circulating ice water and telephones that worked, all night service, and corn pudding, and adjustable heating and free daily papers that were newspapers, and Alpine views from thirtieth-story windows, the American belief that quick laundry-service did not require special permits from the police, and the even more surprising belief that coffee should be served hot and should, preferably, be made from coffee.
Only on the last day of the return crossing was he melancholy, as he groaned, 'Good Lord, I knew I forgot something! I forgot to see an art gallery!'
27
Resort for Protestant preachers & families on vacation, & important Meth Bapt etc. laymen & profs from denominat colleges. All housekeeping cottages but w restaurant (cafeteria?) and general store--much of profits from this. Daily lectures on economics, history, rhetoric, oratory, etc. Circularize preachers' congregations: 'the best gift yr pastor & family, vacation at Camp Luther (Beulah? Pilgrim? Moody?)' All denominations, not just one like Ocean Grove; gt talking point--here Meth, Bapt, Cong, Epis, Xian, Presbyt, Lutheran, etc. get together, get acquainted, imp part of move unite all Protest bodies. Not expect over 6% profit. Note! try woman manager--be good at it and less fuss about which denom she belongs to than if man. Genl store must stock groceries, some meat, respt bathing suits, tennis sneakers, Bibles, patent medicines.
Excavations for the Black Thread Inn and its outbuildings were begun late in June, 1926. Myron's cottage was ready in May, and the Inn formally opened on June 10, 1927. Myron gave half his time, during this year, to the Pye-Charian Hotel in New York; the other half he divided between nagging the builders, and selecting and training his staff, which seemed to him rather more important than the building.
From the Pye-Charian organization he took only two officers: Clark Cleaver, chief clerk of the Walter Scott, for assistant manager and chief clerk of the Inn, and Otto Gritzmeier as chef. In so small a place, Otto was an extravagance, even though he was willing to come for three hundred a year less than he had in the steamy bedlam of the Victor Hugo.
Myron was happily able to hire his brother, Ora, to write publicity during most of the building. He had always felt guilty at doing so little for Ora, who just now happened to be rather hard up, having lost his job as editor and advertising manager of the Hidden Sex Truths Book Publishing Company for having offered to teach hidden sex truths to the stenographers. Before the Inn opened, Ora sold a series of very interesting 'Confessions of a Press-Agent' to a muckraking magazine, and was able to take a richly deserved rest and trip to Europe, to the satisfaction of Myron, who had always regretted that while a mere business man like himself had had that opportunity, it had hitherto been denied to Ora, with his splendid knowledge of history and literature.
As permanent press-agent and 'host' of the Inn, Myron hired Benny Rumble, hotel-news correspondent of Smart Mart. He did not like Benny, a dapper little young man with a smirk and clothes too well-fitted around the hips, given to dancing, bridge, poetic quotations, and rose-tipped cigarettes, but Dick Pye insisted that Benny would be just the lad to entertain the old ladies at the Inn, and absolutely safe with the young ladies.
The head waiter was to be Frank Rabatel of the Restaurant Cocarde, Philadelphia; the hotel detective--always known as 'hotel dick'--was Dutch Linderbeck from the Fishkill House of Albany, who was said to know more politicians more gloomily than even the Capitol janitor. For a hundred-and-twenty-room hotel, a detective was not necessary, but Myron wanted to protect the wealthy guests he was presumably going to have against every manner of confidence-man and fake Russian prince.
A yet greater extravagance was the veteran floor-waiters. His whole scheme of superior service would fail if guests, when they rang the bell, were answered by the amiable but untrained college students on vacation who were the bellboys and waiters in most summer hotels. The experienced guest wanted the bell answered by an initiate, to whom the procuring of coffee, stamps, aspirin or wrapping paper and cord, was a passionate duty.
For a month before the opening, Myron and his lieutenants drilled the kitchen staff, the waiters and bus-boys, the desk-clerks and bell-boys and telephone-girls and porters, and even the cigar-and-candy-stand girl, and when the last was offended at the suggestion that there was anything she could learn, Myron was pleased at having it happen so early, and hired another young lady. The chambermaids had blue-prints of what ought to be done in every room every day; precisely what must daily be swept, dusted. They were dragooned as thoroughly as chorus-girls--though they were expected to be more charming than chorus-girls during working-hours and considerably less so after hours. The whole Inn would open as smoothly as though it had been running for five years. Myron did not remember it, but he was carrying out vows he had made amid the deliriums of Tippacanoe Lodge, twenty years before.