BOARDING-HOUSES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 208, 30 March 1877, Page 13

BOARDING-HOUSES.

If I had been born a daughter of Eve, the first question I should put to that individual, of what is termed the nobler sex, who ventured to pop the question to me, would be, " Have you ever lived in a boarding-house, and, if so, how long ? " And if I received for answer, " Yes, my Angelina, for five years I have sat at Mrs. Jones' mahogany (landladies revel, I have often noticed, in the name of Jones), I should politely but firmly remind him that I was not his Angelina, that my name was Miss Smith, and that he must continue to grace the mahogany of Mrs. Jones for five or fifty years more for all I was concerned, but that I must beg to be excused from ever sitting at the head of his. A resident of a boarding-house for a period under five'years I might be inclined to regard with favor, but an elder boarder than that I should peremptorily decline. For a well developed specimen of the genius selfish man, commend me to an old resident in a boarding-house. It is beautiful, if not instructive, to observe his attention to number one. For the full-fledged bird you must go to the boarding-house where there are no ladies, and where the members of the other and nobler^ (Heaven save the mark!) sex are few, and have been long acquainted with one another. The carver in such an establishment has not a pleasant position. He certainly, it must be confessed, has not much trouble in discovering what each one likes best off the joint. There is no need for him to stand, knife and fork in hand, beseeching of the person whom he wishes to assist to tell him what part he can have the pleasure of helping him to. All that part of his business is made wonderfully easy" His questions on this head are all anticipated, and, heaven help him, if two of the boarders have tastes akin. His efforts in such a case to please both parties are not, as a general rule, crowned with success, always provided, of course, that he himself be not one of them. Then, indeed, one of these sympathetic fellow-boarders leaves the dinner-table quite satisfied, whatever may be the feelings of tne other. And this explains the reason why the position of carver is so much thought of in boarding-houses. He is master of the situation, and where the motto is " each one for himself," of course the man with the joint before him has a great pull over his neighbours. The oldest boarder generally fills the post, and it is astonishing to what an extent he will go in asserting his privileges. I have had some experience of boarding houses. lam notflet me hasten to inform any young and as yet unmarried lady who may happen to read these lines, a " five-yearer/'— if I may use the expression— so that lam still, and shall be for some considerable time, amongst those whom I have advised young ladies not to make miserable, simply because they have lived in boarding-houses But my experience, though short in point of time, has been much, and varied m incidents. I have lived with the private family, I have had private apartments, and I have lived in boarding-houses, pure and simple, of all sorts and sizes.

„,. As an instance of how completely wrapped up in one's own little wants and desires one is apt to become by long residence in a boarding-house, to the utter exclusion of any regard for your neighbour, I remember once listening to a hot dispute between an old boarder— the carver of the establishment— and the landlady, as to the particular quality of the joint he happened to be carving The gentleman insisted, with all the freedom which lon<* residence and a fair punctuality in the payment of his board warranted him in using, that the meat was not fit to be put upon the table The lady warmly resented the accusation, and asserted it to be fit for the best table in, the land. After much discussion on both sides the gentleman finally clinched the argument by asserting, " Why it was so bad that I could not get a piece off it even for myself." Alter that the landlady collapsed; it was too convincing It silenced even her well-trained and skilled battery of words" The manner in which her opponent delivered this last speech was refreshing, from its simplicity, and its want of the faintest "limmermg of a feeling that he was saying anything out of the common. • ,J^ an anything, again, be more ingenious, when on beino- asked by the landlady which of two kinds of sweets you will have, each oi tnem being of rather small dimensions, than to answer, "Both

please." The gentleman I first heard making use of this stratagem, was a bright particular star in boarding-house qualities. He used no brief measures in getting what he wanted. He had a very big head, large saucer eyes of a bright color, and a bald square face", on which no hair grew. When in the humour his appetite was enormous ; but he was of a hippish tendency, and frequently would vary his indulgence in fceef and mutton by a change to pills, draughts, and mixtures. At such times he would fill the house with his complaints, enlist everyone he could in attending upon him in some way or other, and, if he came to the table, it would be only to express his astonishment and disgust how human beings could continue to eat in such a iranner. He had a loud, arrogant manner, and if not satisfied with what the carver gave him, he would bawl out, " I say, What's-your-name, this is all fat you have given me. Cut under there for me," and he would point with his fat finger to the place he meant. "You have given Smith the piece that I like ;" and his saucer eyes, with their indefinable color, would look over at Smith with an expression as if that gentleman had given him some dire offence. X.Y.Z