“Why should you ask me that question?”
“Because you talk like a married man;—they are the best things in the world for bachelors.”
“On what account, pray?” demanded I.
“On account of the facilities they afford in becoming acquainted with ladies and gentlemen without an introduction; and because they are the nicest places for hearing the scandal of the town.”
“That’s precisely the reason why I dislike them.”
“If you are married, you are right; because a boarding-house is for a married woman what a boarding-school is for a young lady: one spoils the other by precept and example. Scarcely have the gentlemen left the house after breakfast to follow their respective avocations, before the women form themselves into sets in their several bed-chambers to have a talk.”
“That’s the most horrible practice I know, especially as young ladies are admitted to them, and the conversation there turns but too frequently on our foibles.”
“Your three-dollar boarding-houses,” rejoined my friend, “are capital things. One gets plenty to eat for little money; turns in at an early hour in the evening in order to rise early in the morning; and, when the men are about their business, the women attend to their own affairs. Besides, all our cheap boarding-houses are small, accommodating seldom more than two or three families, including that of the landlady; but your fashionable establishments are constructed on the plan of regular barracks. You may quarter in them from ten to fifteen families, belonging to at least two or three different sets, visiting in different societies, and envying each other the very air they breathe. If a card be left for one of them, all the rest will talk of it; if one goes to a party to which the rest are not invited, all the others will be jealous; if one is more indulged by her husband than the rest, she is made the subject of remarks by all her friends; if one shows herself smarter than the others, all will turn up their noses, and declare with one voice that she is a forward woman;—in short, I would rather expose my wife to the perils and inconveniences of a voyage by sea, than leave her with half-a-dozen women at a boarding-house. They are the destruction of domestic happiness; break in upon the sanctity of private life; blight a thousand germs of affection, which can only be matured in retirement; make mutual tenderness the subject of ridicule, and publish those foibles to the world which love and forbearance would scarcely have discovered, and certainly never revealed. If I were a man without a fortune, I would a thousand times rather emigrate to the far West, and live with my wife in a log-house, than in one of those palaces constructed for the torture of husbands! But, as I said before, they answer very well for bachelors; I always advise my single acquaintances to go to a boarding-house in preference to a tavern.”
On entering the parlour, my friend presented me in due form to the landlady, who, being not altogether displeased with his having brought a friend to dine with him, for which she had the right of imposing a tax of one dollar, received me with becoming graciousness. From her my friend turned to a lady of the olden times, dressed in the true style of the Pilgrims, with a plain, dignified, but a little too austere countenance. She received me with the utmost imperturbability, changing not a muscle of her face or body as she drawlingly uttered the words, “How—do—you—do?” By her side sat her daughter, a lovely maiden of between thirty and forty years of age, dyed in the deepest blue of New England learning, with a sharp aquiline nose, over which the reflection from her sharp grey eyes had diffused a sort of aurora borealis. Her upper lip was long, and her mouth unusually large; though her thin compressed lips were strongly indicative of firmness and prudence. She had the good sense to wear a cap; behind which, with becoming bashfulness, she not only concealed her own hair, but also a large portion of that, the continuance of which hung in graceful curls over her waxen cheeks, touching the protuberance of the clavicle.
When my name was mentioned as “from Germany,” I thought my New England Minerva gave some slight sign of emotion, which, with more justice than personal vanity, I traced to the recollection of some difficult points in Kant’s Metaphysics; and, desirous of avoiding a discussion on a subject on which neither her nor my wisdom could contribute much to enlighten the world, I pressed my friend gently towards the next lady, whose youthful appearance was much better calculated to put a man in good-humour for a dinner party. She was a new-blown rose, scarcely past sixteen, with black eyes and black hair, a straight Grecian nose,—and, to say all, she had dimples in her cheeks. Her neck, in gracefulness and whiteness, might have challenged that of a swan; and, although her bust was somewhat diminutive, it corresponded well with her slender waist and the extreme delicacy of her hands and feet. In short, she was one of those American beauties one cannot behold without loving and pitying at the same time; for such is the exquisite proportion and symmetry of their limbs, that not an atom of them can suffer the least alteration without completely destroying the harmony of the whole. One might compare their beauty to that of an elegantly-turned period, in which you cannot alter one word without destroying the whole sentence; or, to use a more correct simile, to a finished piece of poetry, which, by the alteration of a single syllable, degenerates into prose. I never could look on any one of those sylphs without feeling an involuntary emotion to place them, like other jewels, in some velvet écrin, to protect them from vulgar contact, or the blighting influence of the atmosphere.