There are many adventurers hanging round a hotel, who are not enrolled, however, among its regular lodgers. There are numerous 'beats' who merely direct their energies to obtaining meals gratis, taking advantage of the rush to the tables during meal hours. As many as thirty-four of this class were detected at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in a single month. These adventurers often practice the hat game, depositing, when they enter the dining-room, a worthless chapeau, and taking up, when they pass out, a valuable one--by inadvertence, of course. The Metropolitan Hotel has a colored man in its employ stationed at the door of the dining-rooms, who has proved thus far too much for the efforts of any of these gentry, consequently this hotel has been, in this respect, peculiarly fortunate. A man named W----, lately gained the advantage of a hotel detective in a rather amusing manner. He was in the habit of stealing his meals, and was detected so doing, but as he was one day also seen to draw from his pocket a gold watch, attached to a heavy chain, it was determined to give him a little longer indulgence. At last his time was up, and the officer, advancing to him, told him that he had been waited for; that he had taken just so many meals, and must just pay so much money. "But I have no money." "Then I will seize your watch." When, lo! the watch had disappeared, and all the detective could find, in its place was but a bunch of keys--the watch itself having been originally borrowed for a purpose which it had fulfilled. HOTEL THIEVES. All the first-class hotels employ private detectives and watchmen. The business of these men is to keep a watch over the upper part of the house, to prevent thieves from entering and robbing the rooms of the guests. Suspicious persons are at once apprehended, and required to give account of themselves. A friend of the writer once called on an acquaintance at the St. Nicholas, and, being on intimate terms with the gentleman, went immediately to his room, without making the customary inquiries at the office. Although he knew the house very well, he missed his way in the long corridor, and failed to find the stairway. While endeavoring to "get his bearing," he was accosted by a quiet-looking individual, who told him he must go with him to the office and give an account of himself. The man was the private detective of the house, and seeing that the gentleman had lost his way, supposed at once that he was a hotel thief who had become bewildered in trying to make off from the house. Fortunately, the gentleman was well known at the office, where the mistake was at once discovered and apologized for. AN AGILE THIEF.