serenade. Perhaps the Boston bands have that habit of going into an
alley and disciplining their nerves by letting out a tune too big for
the alley, and taking the shock of its reverberation. It may be well
enough for the band, but many a poor sinner in the hotel that night
must have thought the judgment day had sprung upon him. Perhaps the
band had some remorse, for by and by it leaked out of the alley, in
humble, apologetic retreat, as if somebody had thrown something at it
from the sixth-story window, softly breathing as it retired the notes
of "Fair Harvard."

The band had scarcely departed for some other haunt of slumber and
weariness, when the notes of singing floated up that prolific alley,
like the sweet tenor voice of one bewailing the prohibitory movement;
and for an hour or more a succession of young bacchanals, who were
evidently wandering about in search of the Maine Law, lifted up their
voices in song. Boston seems to be full of good singers; but they
will ruin their voices by this night exercise, and so the city will
cease to be attractive to travelers who would like to sleep there.
But this entertainment did not last the night out.

It stopped just before the hotel porter began to come around to rouse
the travelers who had said the night before that they wanted to be
awakened. In all well-regulated hotels this process begins at two
o'clock and keeps up till seven. If the porter is at all faithful,
he wakes up everybody in the house; if he is a shirk, he only rouses
the wrong people. We treated the pounding of the porter on our door
with silent contempt. At the next door he had better luck. Pound,
pound. An angry voice, "What do you want?"

"Time to take the train, sir."