Crane, Stephen / 2008-07-05 00:00:00
1899
THE BLUE HOTEL
by Stephen Crane
I
The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade
that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare
its position against any background. The Palace Hotel, then, was
always screaming and howling in a way that made the dazzling winter
landscape of Nebraska seem only a gray swampish hush. It stood alone
on the prairie, and when the snow was falling the town two hundred
yards away was not visible. But when the traveler alighted at the
railway station he was obliged to pass the Palace Hotel before he
could come upon the company of low clap-board houses which composed
Fort Romper, and it was not to be thought that any traveler could pass
the Palace Hotel without looking at it. Pat Scully, the proprietor,
had proved himself a master of strategy when he chose his paints. It
is true that on clear days, when the great trans-continental
expresses, long lines of swaying Pullmans, swept through Fort
Romper, passengers were overcome at the sight, and the cult that knows
the brown-reds and the subdivisions of the dark greens of the East
expressed shame, pity, horror, in a laugh. But to the citizens of this
prairie town, and to the people who would naturally stop there, Pat
Scully had performed a feat.
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