The huge Chamberlin Hotel, however, remains apparently unchanged, and is
to-day as spacious, comfortable and homelike as when our fathers and
mothers, or perhaps we ourselves, stopped there years ago. The
Chamberlin, indeed, seems to have the gift of perennial youth. I
remember a ball which was given there in honor of Admiral Sampson and
the officers of his fleet, after the Spanish War. The ballroom was so
full of naval and military uniforms that I, in my somber civilian
clothing, felt wan and lonely. Most of the evening I passed in modest
retirement, looking out upon the brilliant scene from behind a potted
palm. And yet, when my companion and I, now in our dotage, recently
visited the Chamberlin, there stood the same potted palm in the same
place. Or if it was not the same, it was one exactly like it.
The Chamberlin is of course a great headquarters for army and navy
people, and we observed, moreover, that honeymooning couples continue to
infest it--for Fortress Monroe has long ranked with Washington and
Niagara Falls as a scene to be visited upon the wedding journey.
There they all were, as of old: the young husband scowling behind his
newspaper and pretending to read and not to be thinking of his pretty
little wife across the breakfast table; the fat blonde bride being
continually photographed by her adoring mate--now leaning against a pile
on the pier, now seated on a wall, with her feet crossed, now standing
under a live-oak within the fortress; also there was the inevitable
young pair who simply couldn't keep their hands off from each other; we
came upon them constantly--in the sun-parlor, where she would be seated
on the arm of his chair, running her hand through his hair; wandering in
the eventide along the shore, with arms about each other, or going in to
meals, she leading him down the long corridor by his "ickle finger".
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