In these public caravanseries the demon of gossip is apt to get full
sway. All the boarders run daily the gauntlet of general
inspection--how they look when they come down in the morning and when
they get in at night, and what they do for a living, and whom they
receive as guests in their rooms, and what they wear, and what they do
not wear, and how they eat, and what they eat, and how much they eat,
and how little they eat. If a man proposes in such a place to be
isolated and reticent and alone, they will begin to guess about him:
Who is he? Where did he come from? How long is he going to stay? Has
he paid his board? How much does he pay? Perhaps he has committed some
crime and does not want it to be known; there must be something wrong
about him, or he would speak.
The whole house goes into the detective business. They must find out
about him. They must find out about him right away. If he leave his
door unlocked by accident he will find that his rooms have been
inspected, his trunk explored, his letters folded differently from the
way they were folded when he put them away. Who is he? is the
question, asked with intenser interest, until the subject has become a
monomania. The simple fact is, that he is nobody in particular, but
minds his own business. The best landlords and landladies cannot
sometimes hinder their places from becoming