It was slow progress and eight o'clock when we pulled into
Rochester.

We were given rooms where all the noises of street and trolley
could be heard to best advantage; sleep was a struggle, rest an
impossibility.

Hotel construction has quite kept pace with the times, but hotel
location is a tradition of the dark ages, when to catch patrons it
was necessary to get in their way.

At Syracuse the New York Central passes through the principal
hotels,--the main tracks bisecting the dining-rooms, with side
tracks down each corridor and a switch in each bed-room; but this
is an extreme instance.

It was well enough in olden times to open taverns on the highways;
an occasional coach would furnish the novelty and break the
monotony, but people could sleep.

The erection of hotels in close proximity to railroad tracks, or
upon the main thoroughfares of cities where stone or asphalt
pavements resound to every hoof-fall, and where street cars go
whirring and clanging by all night long, is something more than an
anachronism; it is a fiendish disregard of human comfort.

Paradoxical as it may seem,--a pious but garrulous old gentleman
was one time invited to lead in prayer; consenting, he approached
the throne of grace with becoming humility, saying, "Paradoxical
as it may seem, O Lord, it is nevertheless true," etc., the phrase