CINDERELLA
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1896
By Charles Scribner's Sons.
*** The stories in this volume have appeared in Scribner's Magazine,Harper's Magazine, Weekly, and Young People; and "The Reporter who MadeHimself King" also in a volume, the rest of which, however, addresseditself to younger readers.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
"He looked beyond, through the dying fire, into thesucceeding years."
CONTENTS
| Cinderella |
| Miss Delamar's Understudy |
| The Editor's Story |
| An Assisted Emigrant |
| The Reporter Who Made Himself King |
| Books by Richard Harding Davis. |
CINDERELLA
The servants of the Hotel Salisbury, which is so called because it issituated on Broadway and conducted on the American plan by a man namedRiggs, had agreed upon a date for their annual ball and volunteerconcert, and had announced that it would eclipse every other annual ballin the history of the hotel. As the Hotel Salisbury had been only twoyears in existence, this was not an idle boast, and it had the effect ofinducing many people to buy the tickets, which sold at a dollar apiece,and were good for "one gent and a lady," and entitled the bearer to ahat-check without extra charge.
In the flutter of preparation all ranks were temporarily levelled, andsocial barriers taken down with the mutual consent of those separated bythem; the night-clerk so far unbent as to personally request the coloredhall-boy Number Eight to play a banjo solo at the concert, which was tofill in the pauses between the dances, and the chambermaids timidlyconsulted with the lady telegraph operator and the lady in charge of thetelephone, as to whether or not they intended to wear hats.
And so every employee on every floor of the hotel was workingindividually for the success of the ball, from the engineers in chargeof the electric light plant in the cellar, to the night-watchman on theninth story, and the elevator-boys who belonged to no floor inparticular.
Miss Celestine Terrell, who was Mrs. Grahame West in private life, andyoung Grahame West, who played the part opposite to hers in the Gilbertand Sullivan Opera that was then in the third month of its New York run,were among the honored patrons of the Hotel Salisbury. Miss Terrell, inher utter inability to adjust the American coinage to English standards,and also in the ki