A boarder is often likened to a worm. And this is a proper comparison if it is a tapeworm that is meant, because a tapeworm always knows in advance what it is going to have for dinner, and so does a boarder. For instance, he knows that on Monday night he will have a New England boiled dinner that tastes like the family wash on Friday night, one gill and part of the dorsal fin of a boiled fish, and on Sunday evening that nourishing repast known as cold Sunday-night tea.
This cold tea is probably the most noted of the established institutions of Hallroumania, being constituted as follows: A dank cold platter, veneered at rare intervals with specimens of the Old Red Corned-Beef Period of Geology, cut to the generous thickness of gold leaf; a peculiar variety of potato-salad, in a free state of perspiration and garnished at intervals with slices of pickled beets, like a few red chips strewn on the kitty; four small squares of petrified pastry (not suitable for food, but could be given to hardy children to cut their teeth on); a prune-floater, bloated up and nine days drowned in its own juice; a cup of ostensible tea.
The common recreations of The Boarderland are rushing the washstand-duck in a dress-suit case; wondering how the other boarders can afford the clothes they wear; progressive knocking and raising scandals from the slip. The prevalent disease is Furnished Rheumatism, brought on by living in a single-breasted apartment, and is marked by a cramped, choking sensation, the symptoms being almost identical with those of Harlem Flatulency.
Drawn by Henry Reuterdahl.
“THE FIGHT OF TO-MORROW”
From a painting on the wardroom bulkhead of the Battleship “New Jersey.”
L e s Y e u x
by Jeffie Forbush-Hanaford.
Illustration by Thomas Fogarty.