No one ever called this hospitable home a boarding-house, for the proprietor was furious if it was given that name.He also scorned the idea of keeping a hotel.So that I never quite understood in what relation he stood toward us.He certainly considered himself our host, and ignored the financial side of the question severely.
In order not to hurt his feelings by speaking to him of money, we were obliged to get our bills by strategy from a male subordinate.
Mine host and his family were apparently unaware that there were people under their roof who paid them for board and lodging.We were all looked upon as guests and "entertained," and our rights impartially ignored.
Nothing, I find, is so distinctive of New England as this graceful veiling of the practical side of life.The landlady always reminded me, by her manner, of Barrie's description of the bill-sticker's wife who "cut" her husband when she chanced to meet him "professionally" engaged.As a result of this extreme detachment from things material, the house ran itself, or was run by incompetent Irish and negro "help." There were no bells in the rooms, which simplified the service, and nothing could be ordered out of meal hours.
The material defects in board and lodging sink, however, into insignificance before the moral and social unpleasantness of an establishment such as this.All ages, all conditions, and all creeds are promiscuously huddled together.It is impossible to choose whom one shall know or whom avoid.A horrible burlesque of family life is enabled, with all its inconveniences and none of its sanctity.People from different cities, with different interests and standards, are expected to "chum" together in an intimacy that begins with the eight o'clock breakfast and ends only when all retire for the night.No privacy, no isolation is allowed.If you take a book and begin to read in a remote corner of a parlor or piazza, some idle matron or idiotic girl will tranquilly invade your poor little bit of privacy and gabble of her affairs and the day's gossip.There is no escape unless you mount to your ten-by-twelve cell and sit (like the Premiers of England when they visit Balmoral) on the bed, to do your writing, for want of any other conveniences.Even such retirement is resented by the boarders.