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Show I j Welcome to Atlantic City j By Frederic J. Haskin. ; v; ATLANTIC CITl". X. J., Sept. 6. "Wei- ! coir.e to Atlantic City, America's Play- j ground!" says the bii; electric sign on the ! building of the Atlantic City Electric com- ! rany. The vacationist sees it from the ; tra'.n window, :tnj hs puise quickens with anticipation. Here is a veritable city ol i joy. greeting him in letters o fire. Two wee.ts later, :is he is pulling out j for home, sunburnt, 'croke, and bitten by , sand-fleas in sev enteen ot" t'ne most inac- i cessiblu parts of his anatomy, his imagination imagi-nation pictures under that welcoming sign a proviso as lullow.s: "Provided you made j a reservation four months ai;o, and do not i mind paying two or three prices for every- ; thing you get." i Owing to the fact that some eight or ten Atlantic City hotels advertised in his home own paper, the vacationist did not ! think It was necessary to make a reserva- ' tion. It the hotels had all their rooms engaged for tile next two summers, why j did they advertise? But thi.s question is forgotten as the , hunt for a room grows fast and hot. At- lantic City is reputed to have over one thousand hotels. Of thee-se perhaps seven j are pretty good hotels, where you can ; spend a day in mldseason, provided one of your ancestors bequeathed you a reservation, reser-vation, for about what it would cost you to spend a week at home. These good hotels front the beach. The other i'!i3 hotels are small frame shacks, built shortly before the civil war. They line every side street in solid ranks for a quarter of a mile back from the beach. In appearance and quality of service they are about on a par with those hotels in big cities which have the office upstairs, and advertise rooms at fifty, seventy-five and a dollar. In off-season times these hotels will give you a room on either the American or the European plan. In fact, they will give you anything you want, at your own price. In October you could probably rent a whole hotel for about two dollars a night. But not in July not by a darn sight! The worst room In the humblest hotel Is around six dollars a day, American Ameri-can plan. The Atlantic City people are very strong for hotel Americanism. Which means that where you find shelter, there likewise you eat, and you take whatever they give you. They wouldn't have you eat a meal away from home for anything. That's how hospitable they are. Welcome to Atlantic City! It is to these endless rows of small wooden hotels with long names that our hero, the hopeful vacationist, ultimately comes. But do not Imagine that he gets one of these rooms with meals Inextricably included. Such things are reserved for those with forethought and political pull. The first thing that Atlantic City gives this trusting- guest is a long walk. With his Bultcase in his left hand, fanning his dewy brow with a chip straw hat in his right, he plods from-door to door like a book agent, interviewing clerks and landladieschiefly land-ladieschiefly the latter. Most Atlantic City hotels are run by motherly-looking persons who'.tnrh you away from their doors with a patient kindliness and an obvious regret that almost brings a tear to the eve. All of them are "full up," but some few can be found who will take you in any-w-ay, just because they are naturally kind and hospitable, and perhaps because they want to live up to the electric sign. The proprietor of the Magnolius hotel, for example, ex-ample, which has fourteen rooms and one bath, and allows guests to wear their bathing bath-ing suits in the lobby,, tells you, with a smile, that all of his' rooms are engaged until September 1. "Tell v-ott what I'll do, though. Just as an accommodation." he adds'. . "See this sofey in the parlor? Well, Just as art-accommodation, I'll let you have that tor, seven dollars, with your meals. There won't be anybody in here after 12 or 1 o'clock, less'n I put another man on that settee over there " Feeling that if the Magnolius can do that well, perhaps some other place can do better, bet-ter, you continue on your w-ay, and so come to the Hlptochonorius house,, which, advertises in New York and Washington Washing-ton papers as "Atlantic "City's Hotel Unique." It Is made by throwing together several ancient residences. ' The dining room is in the basement and the office is across the street, while unlimited bathing facilities are afforded by the Atlantic ocean, just two blocks away. . The stout lady who runs the Hlptochonorius Hlptocho-norius house leads you by devious and creaking stairways to the attic, where she shows you a small room in which all of the floor space is occupied by two double beds and three cots. "You can have half a double bed for three dollars, or a cot all to yourself for five," she admits. "We ain't got no more chairs- In the dining room No, there won't be more than seven men in here tonight, and I never put any drunks In this room " So it goes until the panting, perspiring supplicant is willing to take almost anything, any-thing, and begins to regret some of the things he" passed up scornfully a couple, of hours ago. At last he comes to. the Hydrangea house. He approaches the lean. Inscrutable-looking lady behind the desk with a determined smile. "Could you give me any sort of a room?" he inquires, timid yet hopeful. Without batting an eyelid or altering her cryptic expression, the woman replies: "Yes, sir; I can give you a room." Our hero falls forward, catching at the desk for support with one hand, while with the other he reaches for the pen to register. reg-ister. Taking no notice of his obvious emotion, emo-tion, the lady tosses a key to an ununl-formed ununl-formed black. "Take the gentleman to tentville, " she mvsteriously commands. Now this is a true story, and tentville Is a fact. Onlv the name of the hotel of which It forms a part is fictitious. The Hydrangea house is another one of those hotels made by combining several of the residences built by early settlers In these parts. Each floor is on several different dif-ferent levels, and the building has an artless art-less intricacy of arrangement which furnishes fur-nishes the guest with an amusement not mentioned in the advertisements, It takes a man with a good sense of direction to learn in three days how to find the bathroom bath-room without a guide. At the rear of the Hydrangea house is a large room, which was probably used a century or more ago as a store room, since it has but one small window. This room is tentville. It has been divided by partitions of cloth about seven feet high into at least a dozen small rooms, giving it much the appearance of a giant wasp nest. Each of these cubicles contains con-tains a two-dollar cot, an electric light, and nothing else. The partitions serve the purposes of privacy, in that they render ren-der it impossible to recognize the features of vour next-door neighbor, but they allow" al-low" vou to study his silhouette, and to memorize all his coughs, sneezes and snores. The price of a. night In tentville is three dollars, paid in advance. Here, then, our hero at last finds a haven. He takes off his collar and his shoes, kills a couple of mosquitoes., moves his cot around until It stands almost level, and stretches himself luxuriously at full length, heaving a mighty sigh. He has his welcome to Atlantic City. |