BOARDING-HOUSE CHARACTERS.
Persons seeking board in New York frequently complain of being annoyed by a demand on the part of the landlady (for the proprietor, is, in most cases, a woman) for reference. This may not be pleasant to the over-sensitive, but it is absolutely necessary. Nearly every boarder is at first a stranger to his landlady. She does not know whether a man is a gentleman or a thief, or whether a female is a saint or a fallen woman. She naturally desires to keep her house free from improper characters, and to secure as guests those who will pay her promptly and regularly.
In spite of these efforts, however, it may be safely affirmed that there are not ten boarding houses in the city, which do not contain improper characters. Observers have been struck with the number of handsome young widows who frequent these places. Sometimes these women claim to be the wives of men absent in the distant Territories, or in Europe, and pretend to receive letters and remittances from them. In nine cases out of ten such women make their living in a manner they do not care to have known. They conduct themselves with the utmost propriety towards all persons living in the house with them, and are considered ladies by even acute judges. These same judges are sometimes a little startled to meet these virtuous dames in places where ladies are never seen. Of course the secret is kept, and the woman continues to deceive her other companions.
Landladies are the object of the especial attentions of swindlers, and suffer very much from them. All sorts of expedients are resorted to by the unprincipled to live without paying their board.