The tea was none of that good old stuff that once brought $50 a pound, but some of the adulterated mixture, thirty million pounds of which Uncle Sam, Aunt Columbia and their little ones, pour annually into their saucers and empty into their mouths.
“Now, then, Mr. Lawyer,” said my friend Mr. Jim Crax, as the bread and butter, tea and toast were fast disappearing off the table on to the chairs, “kindly redeem your promise, and tell us the difference between a boarding-house keeper and an hotel-keeper; that is, the difference in law—we all know the practical differences only too well.”
After a preliminary hem and haw, I began as follows: “It might be as well to say, in the first place, that a boarding-house is not in common parlance, or in legal meaning, every private house where one or more boarders are occasionally kept upon special considerations; but is a quasi-public house, where boarders are generally and habitually received as a matter of business, and which is held out to the public and known as a place of entertainment of that kind.[403] The chief distinction between a boarding-house and an inn, and the one from which all others naturally flow, is that the keeper of a boarding-house can choose his own guests, admitting some and rejecting others, as to him in his discretion or according to his whims and humors may seem best; while an innkeeper is obliged to entertain all travelers of good conduct, and possessed of means of payment, who choose to stop at his house, and those who do stay he must provide with all they have occasion for while on their way.”[404]
“That seems rather hard on the innkeeper.”
“No: he is compensated by having greater privileges than his humbler brother; and such a rule is necessary for the welfare and convenience of the traveling public, who cannot be expected, in the hurry of journeyings, to stop and hunt through a town for a night’s lodging, making a special bargain with the keeper of the house. A lodging-house keeper makes a special contract with every man that comes to him, whereas an innkeeper is bound, without any particular agreement, to provide lodging and entertainment for all who come to him, at a reasonable price.[405] In the one case the guest is entertained on an implied contract from day to day; in the other, there is an express contract for a certain time at a certain rate.”[406]
“But surely,” said Jim Crax, “oftentimes a definite agreement to board is made with an hotel-keeper.”
“Of course, I know that,” I replied. “But, then, if he does so on the arrival of his guest he loses the rights and privileges as well as the liabilities of his order; although an arrangement as to the price only, after one has become a guest, will not have that effect.[407] And it has been held that a public hotel at a watering place possessing medicinal springs, and opened only during the summer and fall for the accommodation of visitors in search of health and pleasure, is, in fact, only a boarding-house, the visitors not being guests for a day, night, or week, but lodgers or boarders for a season.”[408]
“What,” said the landlady’s daughter, who was angling for the young law student and so tried to season her generally frivolous conversation with an occasional semi-sensible remark or question, “What are the privileges of an innkeeper which a boarding-house keeper does not enjoy? The right to charge $5 per day?”
“Their right of lien. You, of course, know what that is?” I replied.
“Oh, certainly,” she answered, though she no more knew what it meant than I do the hieroglyphics on Cleopatra’s Needle.