One good custom which still survives and is likely to do so, is the penny collection in the Commercial Room for the Commercial Travellers’ Schools and the Commercial Travellers’ Benevolent Association. This collection is taken daily at every dinner in the commercial room all over the country, and it is largely from the proceeds that these institutions are supported. A sidelight on custom may be observed in the fact that in many hotels now the collection is taken at breakfast to ensure every traveller being present. The midday dinner became less well attended, and this led to a serious diminution in the receipts when once travellers began to use restaurants and take advantage of local travelling facilities to visit customers at some distance from headquarters. It is common for the landlord of the inn to take charge of the money collected. The president of the table enters the amount, divided into equal portions into two books and fixes his initials, the proprietor of the establishment, on the annual remittance to the Association, receiving a votes allotment which can be utilized on behalf of any applicants for the privileges of the two philanthropic bodies.
No one is permitted to smoke in the commercial room until after 9 p.m., a rule which is observed far more strictly than those unacquainted by actual experience with the traveller’s life might think. The custom of using slippers of the inn, which indispensable “Boots” keeps often at his own expense, is peculiar to the commercial room, though many travellers now carry their own foot wear for the fireside with them. At the _Red Horse_,[17] Stratford-on-Avon, “Boots” is credited with having as fine a selection of comfortable slippers as is to be found in the kingdom.
Convenience for those who use the room led to the provision of a big table in the centre, with small writing-tables round the walls. In old inns this simple method of furnishing is still retained; but more pretentious establishments now have a separate writing-room. Upon the landlord rests the responsibility of providing many small details in equipment, such as books of reference, time-tables, ink-stands, paper and pens. At the _Old Steyne Hotel_, Brighton, the landlord--himself an old Commercial--even goes to the length of providing an open box of penny and halfpenny stamps which travellers may take from as they will, paying for what they use by placing the money in another box which stands close by. Probably in no other room of an inn could such a convenience be extended without abuse. At the same hotel a special stand of well-selected canes is always kept for travellers who may wish to use them in their walks of relaxation on the front.