Why this admirable contrivance has not been introduced into this country, I cannot conceive.
The bar is one of the most--if not the most--important departments in the hotel; comparatively nothing is drunk at dinner, but the moment the meal is over, the bar becomes assailed by applicants; moreover, from morning to midnight, there is a continuous succession of customers; not merely the lodgers and their friends, but any parties passing along the street, who feel disposed, walk into the bar of any hotel, and get "a drink." The money taken at a popular bar in the course of a day is, I believe, perfectly fabulous.
Scarcely less important than the bar is the barber's shop.

Nothing struck me more forcibly than an American under the razor or brush: in any and every other circumstance of life full of activity and energy, under the razor or brush he is the picture of indolence and helplessness.

Indifferent usually to luxury, he here exhausts his ingenuity to obtain it; shrinking usually from the touch of a nigger as from the venomed tooth of a serpent, he here is seen resigning his nose to the digital custody of that sable operator, and placing his throat at his mercy, or revelling in titillary ecstasy from his manipulations with the hog's bristles;--all this he enjoys in a semi-recumbent position, obtained from an easy chair and a high stool, wherein he lies with a steadiness which courts prolongation--life-like, yet immoveable--suggesting the idea of an Egyptian corpse newly embalmed.
Never shaving myself more than once a fortnight, and then requiring no soap and water, and having cut my own hair for nearly twenty years, I never thought of going through the experiment, which I have since regretted; for, many a time and oft have I stood, in wonder, gazing at this strange anomaly of character, and searching in vain for a first cause.

The barber's shop at the St.Nicholas is the most luxurious in New York, and I believe every room has its own brush, glass, &c., similarly numbered in the shop.
The crowning peculiarity of the new hotels is "The Bridal Chamber;" the want of delicacy that suggested the idea is only equalled by the want of taste with which it is carried out.

Fancy a modest girl, having said "Yes," and sealed the assertion in the solemn services of the Church, retiring to the bridal chamber of the St.Nicholas! In the first place, retiring to an hotel would appear to her a contradiction in terms; but what would be her feelings when she found the walls of her apartment furnished with fluted white silk and satin, and in the centre of the room a matrimonial couch, hung with white silk curtains, and blazing with a bright jet of gas from each bed-post! The doors of the sleeping-rooms are often fitted with a very ingenious lock, having a separate bolt and keyhole on each side, totally disconnected, and consequently, as they can only be opened from the same side they are fastened, no person, though possessed of a skeleton key, is able to enter.