_by Irvin S. Cobb_.
_Illustration by O. Cesare._
The Boarderland is a drear domain bounded on the north by top-floor
bedrooms, lying above the frost-line, because the steam register
always gets discouraged and quits one story below. It is bounded on
the south by basement dining-rooms, where it is night six months
a year and just before daylight the rest of the time; on the east
by an entrance hall agreeably perfumed with the combined aroma of
kerosene, mother-of-onion, veteran linoleum and the stuffing in
the red-plush sofa, and on the west by a parlor nine feet wide and
thirty-two feet long, with one window in it and a doctor’s sign
in the window. The doctor’s private office lies just back of the
parlor, so the parlor smells mildewed when the connecting door is
closed and iodoformed when it’s open.
Boarders, as the natives of this land are commonly called, are
never allowed in the parlor except once, that occasion being when
they first apply for board. Thereafter they entertain their company
on the front stoop in the summer and on the telephone in the
winter. Winter company is the more expensive.
[Illustration: “_Thereafter they entertain their company on the
front stoop._”]
The ruling classes of Hallroumania are known as Landladies and may
be classed generally into the following subdivisions: Landladies
who belong to Old Southern Families and formerly rode in Their Own
Carriages, but suffered Heavy Financial Reverses through the Cruel
War brought on By Your Mister Lincoln; Landladies who never married
and don’t regret it; Landladies who did marry and frequently regret
it; Landladies who have no use for husbands, and Landladies who
have husbands and use them to take the dog out.
The inhabitants are indeed a weird race, including unrecognized
geniuses, earnest hopers, chronic grouches, back files and innocent
bystanders; also single gentlemen who are believed to have had
what is known as A PAST, and who are suspected of leading the
dissipated life because they come in of an evening with the odor
of rum and Business Men’s Lunch on their breath; also young women
of undoubted dramatic power, who won the first prize for elocution
at the Rome Centre School of Expression and came on two winters
ago to put Julia Marlowe out of the business, but are being kept
back temporarily owing to a jealous compact on the part of the
theatrical syndicate; also other young women who think they are
entitled to bird-like notes because they had the thrush once, and
were sent here at heavy expense by fond parents who imagine New
York as a place full of talented voice-plumbers who know how to
weld Nellie Melba pipes on a Ruth Ann larynx; also single ladies
who spend part of the time drying handkerchiefs on the window-panes
and doing light laundry work in a toothbrush-mug, and the rest of
the time making life brighter and sweeter for a pug dog with the
asthma.
Also dashing gents connected with leading brokerage offices
downtown, who wear priceless marquise rings on the little finger
of the right hand, and go secretly away at night owing for two
weeks; also persons of both sexes who have been misunderstood by
the world and crave A Little Sympathy—that is all; also ladies who
are constantly on the verge of moving to a perfectly delightful
place up in Ninety-third Street because a fur-bearing foreigner has
opened a Pants-Pressery next door and the neighborhood is rapidly
losing its tone; also, just plain boarders.
A boarder is often likened to a worm. And this is a proper
comparison if it is a tapeworm that is meant, because a tapeworm
always knows in advance what it is going to have for dinner, and so
does a boarder. For instance, he knows that on Monday night he will
have a New England boiled dinner that tastes like the family wash
on Friday night, one gill and part of the dorsal fin of a boiled
fish, and on Sunday evening that nourishing repast known as cold
Sunday-night tea.
This cold tea is probably the most noted of the established
institutions of Hallroumania, being constituted as follows: A dank
cold platter, veneered at rare intervals with specimens of the Old
Red Corned-Beef Period of Geology, cut to the generous thickness
of gold leaf; a peculiar variety of potato-salad, in a free state
of perspiration and garnished at intervals with slices of pickled
beets, like a few red chips strewn on the kitty; four small squares
of petrified pastry (not suitable for food, but could be given to
hardy children to cut their teeth on); a prune-floater, bloated up
and nine days drowned in its own juice; a cup of ostensible tea.
The common recreations of The Boarderland are rushing the
washstand-duck in a dress-suit case; wondering how the other
boarders can afford the clothes they wear; progressive knocking and
raising scandals from the slip. The prevalent disease is Furnished
Rheumatism, brought on by living in a single-breasted apartment,
and is marked by a cramped, choking sensation, the symptoms being
almost identical with those of Harlem Flatulency.
[Illustration: _Drawn by Henry Reuterdahl._
“THE FIGHT OF TO-MORROW”
From a painting on the wardroom bulkhead of the Battleship “New
Jersey.”]