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Show BOARDING-HOUSE TROUBLES. It may have been the morning hash. It may have been the beef or the butter. It may have been the unsuccessful and unrisen rolls. Perhaps it was the malign combination of all these indigestibilities. But certain it is, that there was trouble in an up town boarding house, which culminated last Monday afternoon in the shoooing [shooting] of Dr. Theophilus Steele by Mr. William B. Sawyer. The last-named gentleman complained to the landlady about the quality of the rations provided by her for her helpless patrons. He said that he could stand it no longer. The landlady, necessarily aggrieved, told him that he must leave. He refused to do so, and began to order victuals to be brought to his room. Dr. Steele sided with the woman. It is curious, but there is always somebody in such a house who sides with the mistress. The quarrel went on. Digestion, frequently bad enough in such establishments, grew worse and worse. Temper deteriorated proportionately. Mrs. Sawyer declared that Dr. Steele had threatened to put her out of her misery as a boarder and to save her from further pangs of indigestion by shooting her with a pistol. As a further indignity, one of the waiter boys flung a spit-ball (so called) at Mrs. Steele. The result of all this is that Mr. Sawyer is in the Tombs and Dr. Steele in bed with a bullet wound in his face as inflamed as his temper. Here, indeed, is a melancholy denouement. We only wish we knew whether it was the hash or the beef, the butter or the rolls. If there should be an inquest, which the fates prevent, we beseech the Coroner to look into that particular matter. For we take upon ourselves to say that if all these quarrelsome people had only been provided with proper breakfasts, and a long series of dinners upon which memory might fondly dwell, there would have been no quarrel and no shooting. Blandness would have taken possession of their perturbed bosoms, and a sweet serenity brooded over the whole establishment from the sub cellar to the attic. Mr. Sawyer would have blessed the cook, and remembered her in his prayers, if he ever made any. It is true that some susceptible boarder might have fallen in love with the landlady, and the precision of his digestive processes been thus destroyed, but he would only have been one, and if he had proved troublesome in his amorous protestations, the other bland and peace-loving boarders would have united in gently but firmly expelling him from this paradisiacal retreat. All would have gone on pleasantly. There would have been billing and cooing in the parlors. There would have been pretty tunes played upon the rattle-trap of a piano. Each inmate would have smilingly greeted his ?? through the steam of the grateful soup. All the diners would have amiably congratulated each other upon the extreme tenderness, the succulent juiciness of the beef. There would have been a touching faith even in the lemon meringue. All would have been like birds in their little nests, while the landlady would have scorned to every grateful guest, if not a form of life and light, at least a very superior sort of woman. Instead of which, growls, grumbles, fell discontent, threats, and pistol ballin'. Tis enough to make a marble image take out its handkerchief. In the chronic hostility between the landlady and the boarder we take neither side, much preferring an attitude of philosophical neutrality, only we wish that the former would remember that a man who is not pleased with his dinner is a dangerous animal and can hardly be expected to maintain a bland and equable carnage. He has rights which his landlady is bound to respect, and vice versa, and since bad cooking is at the bottom of about half the trouble in the world what a missionary physical and spiritual, a conscientious and capable empress of a boarding house might be! |
