HOUSES V. BOARDING-HOUSES.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 232, 21 February 1885, Page 8

HOUSES V. BOARDING-HOUSES.

By a Man Who Lives Round in Spots. There are "Homes" for everybody and everything in these days : homes for orphans, homes for young women, homes for Magdalens, and even a home for lame dogs and vagabond cats. I have even heard of a " Home Insurance Company." But whoever heard of a "Boarding - house Insurance Company?" Many years ago, when I was a houseless vagrant, when no boarding - house would open its hospitable doors to me unless I paid a week in advance, when even the home for lame dogs and vagabond cats would have refused me a shake-down, my soul was moved to^its depths by several gorgeous cards in a cook-shop window setting out the virtues of " home-made pie." Mmd t it wasn't " board-ing-house-made pie," or "boarding-house hash." Whoever heard of a " boarding - house stretch," instead of a " home stretch," in the language of the turf? On the other hand we frequently hear of "boarding-house stretchers." Colonists, who have amassed wealth by lending money at 150 per cent., or keeping boarding-houses, often" talk of being " homesick," but never " boarding - house sick," unless of the hash or the corned beef. The man who wrote " Home, Sweet Home," would never have demeaned himself and his immortal muse by singing " Boarding-house, Sweet Boarding-house." He knew better. It is to be presumed he had travelled. Fancy a man singing — " Be it ever so humble there's no place like boardinghouse." We have all heard of the "home sewingmachine," but how about the: "boardinghouse sewing-machine ?" Oh, no, we never mention it, it's name is never heard. When Goldsmith wrote " The Traveller," it never struck him that it would be a noble and patriotic sentiment to sing: — " Such is the patriot's boast where'er wo roam, His first, best country ever is at boarding-hou&e." How would it sound to read from Ecclesiastes : "The grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long boarding-house ?" Suppose you were to tell a homely girl that she was " boarding-housely." Wouldn't she just get back on her high heels and dressimprover and give you some homely, or rather boarding-housely language ? You never know the pleasures of a home until you have lived in a boardinghouse. When you are at home you do not have to sit down to dinner between a Blueribbonite and a member of the Salvation Army ; you don't have to swear the steak is tender when you couldn't cut it with a crosscut saw. No, my dear Christian friend, you could safely say at home that the steak would make good gate-hinges, asphalt, bricks for the Free Public Library, or Milne and Choyce's new establishment. At home you don't find that the hired girl has propped up the window with your Tricopherous, and thrown your slippers so far under the bed that you have to go through a course of gymnastics, at the cost of a pair of Greenshield's braces, several buttons, and th^p reverse side of your unmentionables, to dive and haul out those slippers. At home you can lie abed as long as you like, without fear of the housemaid coming round with the broom and slop-pail. You can defy the housemaid. That's what you dare not do in a boardinghouse. , ' ' ' ::-■.,;, In the suburbs Mrs Ponsonby-de"-Pumpkin ; s

gives an. " At-Home," and the "Observer gives a list of the guests and what the ladies wore (at least outside)p,and everybody buys the pap%r and reads it, arid the women — God?' bless 'eife! — get nasty and cross if the old man forgtts to^ bring, the Observer home in his .pocket when he returns from business.. But, of ten as we read about an "At Home," did anyone ever read in the Observer or anywhere else anything about an "At Boarding House ?". The thing would be absurd and preposterous 611 the face of it. - If you live in a boarding-house you are a _X '• slave to the bell; That dreadful bell rings the death-knell of your final forty winks when you have a headache after attending a .-lodge or /? seeing a very particular friend, and youWst hurry down to your breakfast or you will miss it. Xou are at liberty then to go and purchase a meal elsewhere. Ifj|you live in a boarding-house and come home late, you find the landlady looking sour and the table cleared ; but if you have a home and come in late,^ou find your dinner in the oven, with the meat and .vegetables and gravy burnt up to a crisp mass, like a piece of scoria, and you can take up the whole concern " and eat it like a cracker. Our first parents didn't keep a boardinghouse in Eden. They kept house. And even when they got notice to quit, and the V angels with flaming swords were in possession, Adam and didn't go and set up a boarding-house. Adam was happy. There was no landlady to look daggers at him if he was behindhand with the needful — no poor widow to tell him, with her fig-leaf up to her eyes, that she couldn't afford to " lay" out of her money. Noah didn't keep a boarding-house in the Ark, though there were boards in the craft. ' Jacob was the first man that boarded, and he cheated poor Esau with a plate of morning porridge. If there had been any boarding-, house hash about Jacob would have had him with that. There is a Jacob in every boarding house now-a-days, only they prig your porridge, and cheat you into'the bargain. If Jacob had lived in these days', h,e would have borrowed your brushes and combes, and other miscellaneous articles, and forgotten to return them ; collared the Herald first tiling in the morning and read it right through from the headline to the imprint ; done the same with the Telephone in the evening ; exasperated you to madness by prigging the Observer and hiding it away to read all Sunday instead of going to church ; worn a yellow-braided smoking cap and worked slippers, and monopolised the attentions of the landlady's daughter for seven ,■ years, and then coolly married a retired bill- "^ broker's daughter with a handsome dot, and nothing else handsome about her to speak of. My dear Christian friend, let me conclude my remarks with a few familiar quotations, — slightly altered, if not improved : — "Boarding-house-keeping youth have ever boardinghousely wits." Shakespeaee. " And when from wholesome labour, he doth come, With wishes to be there, and Wished for boardinghouse, He meets at door some mouths like, gaping gashes, ■ . And maws of Cerberus for hatoful, hashes." ■ ■' Cowlet. " He enter'd m his boarding-house, his boarding-house, no longer, f For without cash there is no room, and folt The solitude of passing his owu door Without a latch-key." Btbon. " 'Tib sad to hear the bull-pup's dismil howl, Chained in the back-yard as wo draw near boardinghouse ; 'Tis sad to know there is an eye will mark Our vain attempts to carve that fossil fowl." Btkojt.