MORE ABOUT BOARDING-HOUSE KEEPERS.
Again it was night. All the boarders were assembled around the
tea-table; not exactly, however, as Dr. Talmage would wish, for he said
that you should be seated wide enough apart to have room to take out
your handkerchief if you want to cry at any pitiful story, or to spread
yourself in laughter if someone propound an irresistible conundrum.
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.
“I don’t,” said a lady with greater honesty. “But pray, don’t attempt to
define it. I never try to find out the meaning of a word since I once
looked in Johnson’s dictionary and found that network was ‘anything
reticulated or decussated with interstices between the intersections.’”
“I thought that the proprietor of a boarding-house also had the right of
detaining the goods of their lodgers for their charges,” remarked the
seediest of the company who looked as if he had had practical experience
in such matters.
“Not generally; although in some States the legislatures have conferred
the right upon them to the same extent as an innkeeper has at common
law. This they have, for instance, in New York, New Hampshire, and
Wisconsin;[409] and in Connecticut they have not only the right to
retain the property until the debt is paid, but in case of non-payment
they can sell it to recoup themselves after a certain time.”[410]
“Suppose,” said the student, “as is the case here, one who keeps
boarders occasionally entertains travelers for a night or so--would she
be considered an hotel-keeper in respect to those stray sheep?”
“No,” I replied.
“How would it be if a man agreed to go to a boarding-house and then
backed out and went elsewhere?” asked my _vis-a-vis_ at the table.
“Well, where a man of the name of Stewart agreed by word of mouth with
one who took boarders to pay £100 a year for the board and lodging of
himself and servant and the keep of his horse, and then failed to take
up his quarters at the house, the court considered that the bargain was
not a contract concerning land within the Statute of Frauds and so did
not require to be in writing, and that Stewart was liable to pay for the
breach of his agreement.”[411]
“What is that in front of you, sir?” was queried of me.
“Pork chops, apparently,” I replied. “Will you take one?”
“No, thanks; I am a Jew as far as pork is concerned. In fact, although
not so bad as Marshal d’Albert, who was always taken ill whenever he saw
a roast sucking-pig, I am like the celebrated Guianerius--pork always
gives me a violent palpitation of the heart.”
“’Tis curious what antipathies some people have to particular kinds of
food. I have read of a man who was always seized with a fit when he
tried to swallow a piece of meat,” said a Mr. Knowall.
“Nature evidently intended him for a vegetarian.”
“I have heard of another who was made ill if he ever ate any mutton,”
continued the gentleman; “and of a man who always had an attack of the
gout a few hours after eating fish. In fact, the celebrated Erasmus
could not smell fish without being thrown into a fever; Count
d’Armstadt never failed to go off in a faint if he knowingly or
unknowingly partook of any dish containing the slightest modicum of
olive oil; the learned Scaliger would shudder in every limb on beholding
water-cresses; and Vladisiaus, of Poland, would fly at the sight of
apples.”
“I read once of a lady who, if she ventured to taste lobster salad at a
dancing party, would, before she could return to the ball-room, be
covered with ugly blotches and her peace of mind destroyed for that
evening,” I remarked.
“The whole question of food is an interesting one,” said Mr. Knowall.
“Do you mean with regard to the sumptuary laws of other days?” queried
the law student.
“Yes. You remember that in the days of the Plantagenets the Houses of
Parliament solemnly resolved that no man, of what state or condition
soever he might be, should have at dinner or supper, or any other time,
more than two courses, and each of two sorts of victual at the utmost,
be it of flesh or fish, with the common sorts of potage, without sauce
or any sort of victuals. And the eating of flesh of any kind during Lent
and on Fridays and Saturdays, was punished by a fine of ten shillings,
or imprisonment for ten days;[412] and in the days of Queen Bess the
fine was increased to £3 and the term of imprisonment to three months;
but if any one had three dishes of sea-fish on his table he might have
one of flesh also.”[413]
“Did Elizabeth do this from any religious motive?” asked a young divine.
“Oh, dear, no. The statute expressly says that the eating of fish is not
necessary for the saving of the soul of man. In the days of bluff old
King Hal, Archbishop Cranmer commanded that no clergyman should have
more than three blackbirds in a pie unless he was a bishop and then he
might have four, but he allowed himself and his brother of York to have
six.”
“When then, pray, did the fashion of having ‘four-and-twenty blackbirds
baked in a pie’ come into vogue?” asked my wife, who had a good memory
for infantile rhymes.