Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

LETTERS TO SATAN
I know of no way to account for this; I only know
that it is extraordinary. The English take kindly
to the other modern conveniences, but for some
puzzling reason or other they will not use the telephone. There are 44,000,000 people there who have
never even seen one.
The lift is an elevator. Like the telephone, it
also is an American invention. Its office is to hoist
people to the upper stories and save them the fatigue
and delay of climbing. That London hotel could
accommodate several hundred people, and it had just
one lift-a lift which would hold four persons. In
America such an hotel would have from two to six
lifts. When I was last in Paris, three years ago, they
were using there what they thought was a lift. It
held two persons, and traveled at such a slow gait
that a spectator could not tell which way it was
going. If the passengers were going to the sixth
floor, they took along something to eat; and at
night, bedding. Old people did not use it; except
such as were on their way to the good place, anyhow.
Often people that had been lost for days were found
in those lifts, jogging along, jogging along, frequently
still alive. The French took great pride in their
ostensible lift, and called it by a grand nameascenseur. An hotel that had a lift did not keep it
secret, but advertised it in immense letters, II y a
une ascenseur," with three exclamation points after it.
In that London hotel- But never mind that
hotel; it was a cruelly expensive and tawdry and
ill-conditioned place, and I wish I could do it a
damage. I will think up a way some time. We
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