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Show Member From Wayback Is "It" at Boarding-House . cupied the fourth-story back. He'd ret all of the 'extrles,' aa the landlady calls them, no matter what part of the plant be Inhabited. I occupy the second-story second-story front myself sometimes during the summer months, but that fact doesn't get me anything In the way of 'extrles,' because I'm Just an ordinary old common-run boarder, y'see, compared com-pared to the member. The member doesn't have to 'settle' for these 'extrles,' 'ex-trles,' either. They're his without extra ex-tra charges. Just by right of his title and exalted station, and If the rest of us don't like It we can go hang." The man with the liver spots and that fried-steak look exuded a despondent despond-ent sigh, says the Washington Star. "Directly." said he, drearily, "the member'll be along, and then the rest of us'll be mutts. "The banky-pank member of. Congress, Con-gress, I mean, who winters at our boarding-house. He's due in a week or so. When he shows up at the board-house board-house the boarders that are stars during dur-ing his absence stop twinkling with their own beams and shine only in his reflected light that is. if he approves of 'em. I'm a kind of a star around that boarding-house myself the rest of the year, when the member isn't around; but when he nudges along I'm a lightning bug at the bottom of a well. Landlady Just sort o' tolerates me when the member's around. She kind o" loosens up and warms to me when he moseys at the end of the session, for I'm a stayer and stick, like some ofi the others, through all the long spring and summer and fall months, when Washington Wash-ington boarding-house landladies need the rent rocks and the market mazoom. We get towels, and the upstairs girl, sweeps under the bed, occasionally, when the member isn't around; but when he looms up the rest of us And that we're Just camping out, and that's all there is to it. "Landlady dances around him like a red ant on a hot rock, and what he doesn't snag out In the way of comforts and privileges around that boarding-house boarding-house well, 'they ain't no core' when he gets through, and you can take it from me. " 'Nough to make a man lumpy around the neck-band to hear the way she plugs for that alfalfa legislator and brags about him. Everybody that comes to the front door, even If It's some duck trying to sell a patent lamp-chimney lamp-chimney cleaner, has got to hear something some-thing about her member from her. First thing folks applying for rooms at the front door hear about is thesmember. " 'Oh. yes,' purls the landlady, 'I have a room on the second floor, right back of Representative Greaseweed's apaht-ment apaht-ment you know of Representative Grease weed, of course? membah from ' and then she uncoils the rest of it about what a brainy, blubberlferous mug the member Is, and how he's going to have a 22,000 word speech about the habits and vices of the tomato bug printed in the Record 'n' so on 'n' so on. "Yep, she scatters that load of verbal ver-bal Junk about the member for the benefit, ben-efit, as she supposes, of everybody that slinks along hunting for rooms. Thinks she's giving the house a tone by unreeling unreel-ing that line o' superheated steam. "But she ain't. She's Just scaring away slews and slathers of applicants for rooms by her allusions to that member. mem-ber. Pretty foxy lot o" boarding-house unfortunates In little old Washington, and most of 'em are dead wise to what It means to live In a Washington boarding-house during sessions with a member; mem-ber; and when they learn from the all-sv.ellod-up landlady that she's got one of "em tucked away In the house at which they apply for accommodations, they generally Just back themselves toward to-ward the front door to execute a getaway geta-way and tell the landlady that they'll be back tomorrow morning at 10 to let her know, and when they make the front gate they sklddoo like folks that want to beat it quick, and they forget all about that comlng-back-to-let-her-know thing "Can't get folks that have lived one winter in the same house with a member mem-ber to fall for that gag again. If they're the movlng-around kind. I stick, like some of the others, because that boarding-house has become a sort of habit to us. But the peripatetic boarders that want what's coming to 'em and that twenty-three" good and quick If they don't get it, can't see that Uvlng-along-slde-of-a-member thing for a cent or any fraction of the same, and It's queer thst landladies don't get next to this and stop shooting the oil about the member to everybody that rings the bell to ask about the rooms. But they never do get next to it. and If I was to up and tell our landlady that' she was making a mistake In doing that shed have me seized during the night and towed over to Lizzle's-House-on-the-Branch in her grocery man's wagon. "This member of ours is a hayer from a Middle Western State. He's a widower wid-ower but that Isn't the answer so far as our landlady is concerned. She's got a husband, her fourth one. and she keeps him out of sight, down In the basement, or up in the attic, most of the time. He smokes a cob pipe constantly, con-stantly, and Is w illing to be submerged. Nope, It's not because our member is a widower that he gets It all at our boarding-house. It's Just because he's a member. "He's one o' those lean, lanky, double-Jointed kind, and any kind of clothes he puts on look like bulgy hand-me-downs on him. Wears a shiny black string necktie, and his shoes are never polished. Hair sticks up In a cowlicky way. and his nails look as If he's generally gen-erally engaged in testing new kinds of fertilizers by feeling of 'em. "He sits at the head of the long dining-room table, of course, and to those of us at the table of whom he approves he occasionally addresses a word or two, generally of correction or admonition, admo-nition, during the progress of the meals. If, for example, somebody at the table ventures the timid opinion that maybe there's going to be some railroad rate legislation, the member glances up in a reproving sort of way, clearly meant to denote his disapproval of the hoi pollol discussing such sacred matters as Congressional legislation In his presence, and then he says, 'Sir, you air not informed in this matter,' or 'Air you sure you have got your Information from a straight source, sir?' or something some-thing like that, and then the crushed one coughs behind his hand and looks foolish and toys with his knife and crawls into his hole generally. "The member has the second story front room, but he'd be the main squeeze any way, no matter. If he oc- |