FINDING A BOARDING HOUSE.
Some years ago there appeared a work on the subject of boarding houses, from which we extract the following description of the experience of a person looking for board in New York.
He either inserts in the Herald, Tribune, or Times, an advertisement specifying his particular requirements, or consults those addressed to humanity in general through the medium of their columns— perhaps adopts both measures. In the former case, the next morning puts him in possession of a vast amount of correspondence, from the daintily-penned and delicately-enveloped billets of up-towndom to the ill-spelled, pencil-scrawled, uncovered notes of Greenwich and Hudson streets. It matters not that he has indicated any definite locality; sanguine householders in remote Brooklyn districts clutch at him, Hoboken residents yearn toward him, and the writer of a stray Williamsburg epistle is 'confident that an arrangement can be made,' if he will favor her with a visit. After laying aside as ineligible as many letters as there are Smiths in a New York Directory, he devotes a morning to the purposes of inspection and selection.
He becomes acquainted with strange localities and bell-handles. He scrutinizes informatory scraps of paper wafered up beside doorways. He endures tedious waiting at thresholds—it being a curious fact in connection with boarding-houses that a single application for admission through the usual medium never procures it. And according as his quest be high or low, so will his experience vary.
If the former, he may expect to be ushered into spacious and luxuriously-furnished parlors, where, seated in comfortably-padded rocking-chairs, and contemplating marble tables, on which gorgeously- bound volumes are artistically arranged; thousand-dollar piano-fortes, and mirrors capable of abashing a modest man to utter speechlessness, he will tarry the advent of stately dames, whose dresses rustle as with conscious opulence. He will precede them—they being scrupulous as to exposure of ankles—up broad staircases to handsome apartments, and listen with bland satisfaction to the enumeration of 'all the modern improvements' which their mansions comprise; nor, perhaps, be startled at the 'figure' for which they may be enjoyed. If 'money be no object,' he will not have to seek far, or fare badly.
"But the researches of him whose aspirations are circumscribed by a shallow purse will produce different results. By Irish girls, with unkempt hair and uncleanly physiognomy, he will be inducted into sitting-rooms where the Venetian blinds are kept scrupulously closed, for the double purpose of excluding flies and preventing a too close scrutiny of the upholstery. He will have interviews with landladies of various appearances, ages and characteristics—landladies dubious and dingy, landladies severe and suspicious, (inflexible as to 'references or payments in advance,') landladies calm and confiding, landladies chatty and conciliatory,—the majority being widows. He will survey innumerable rooms—generally under that peculiarly cheerful aspect attendant on unmade beds and unemptied washing-basins—and, if of sanatory principles, examine the construction of windows in order to ascertain whether they be asphyxiative or moveable. He will find occasion to admire how apartments may be indifferently ventilated by half-windows, and attics constructed so that standing erect within them is only practicable in one spot. How a three-feet-by-sixteen inches strip of threadbare carpet, a twelve-and-a-half-cents-Chatham-square mirror, and a disjointed chair may, in the lively imagination of boardinghouse proprietresses, be considered furniture. How double, triple, and even quintuple beds in single rooms, and closets into which he only succeeds in effecting entrance by dint of violent compression between the 'cot' and wall, are esteemed highly eligible accommodations for single gentlemen. How partitions (of a purely nominal character) may in no wise prevent the occupants of adjoining rooms from holding conversation one with the other, becoming cognizant of neighboring snores, or turnings in bed. He will observe that lavatory arrangements are mostly of an imperfect description, generally comprising a frail and rickety washing-stand—which has apparently existed for ages in a Niagara of soapsuds, a ewer and basin of limited capacity, and a cottony, weblike towel, about as well calculated for its purpose as a similar sized sheet of blotting paper would be. In rooms which have not recently submitted to the purifying brush of the white-washer, he will notice the mortal remains of mosquitoes (not to mention more odoriferous and objectionable insects) ornamenting ceilings and walls, where they have encountered Destiny in the shape of slippers or boot- soles of former occupants."
EXPERIENCE.
All boarding houses begin to fill up for the winter about the first of October. Few of the proprietors have any trouble in filling their establishments, as there is generally a rush of strangers to the City during the winter season. A few of the best houses retain their guests for years, but the occupants of the majority change their quarters every fall. At the first, the table is bountifully supplied with the best the markets afford, the attendance is excellent, and the proprietor is as obliging and pleasant as one could wish. This continues for a month or two until good board becomes scarcer in the City. Then the attendance becomes inferior. The proprietor cannot afford to keep so many servants, and the very best in the house are discharged. The fare becomes poor and scanty, and the proprietor, sure that few will care to change quarters so late in the season, answers all complaints with a gruff intimation that you can leave the house if you are dissatisfied. You feel like taking his advice, and would do so but for the knowledge that you will fare as bad or worse if you do so. You make up your mind to submit, and endure all the discomforts of the house until May with her smiling face calls you into the country, or offers you an opportunity to better your condition.
All houses are more liberal to their boarders in the summer than in the winter—the City is then comparatively deserted, and most of the "highly respectable establishments" are very much in want of guests. They then offer unusual inducements, and are forced by their necessities to atone in some measure for their winter barbarity.