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.
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.
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