would
undergo in keeping house. The truth is, living is so expensive in New
York, that all modes of life are troublesome to those who are not wealthy
enough to disregard expense. But, here, as elsewhere, the privacy of
one's own home is better than the publicity of a boarding-house, and a
fuss with Bridget in one's own kitchen preferable to a row with a
landlady, who may turn you out of doors at the very moment you are
congratulating yourself that you are settled for the season. To persons
with families, boarding-house life ought to be intolerable. Those who
have children find that they cannot rear them as properly as they could
within their own homes, that they cannot as surely shield them from
unfavorable outside influences. Indeed, the troubles which these
"encumbrances" cause are so great that the wife and mother comes to the
conclusion that more children will simply add to her difficulties of this
kind, and so she commences to "regulate" her family, and the little ones
cease coming. Some boarding-houses will not receive children at any
price. Year by year the number of such establishments is increasing.
What will be the result? The question is not hard to answer.

The boarding-house is generally a cast-off mansion of gentility. There
are a score of things about it to remind you that it was once a home, and
to set you to speculating on the ways of the grim fate that has changed
it into a place of torment. Whole volumes have been written on the
subject, and all agree that is simply what I have described it to be.
From the fashionable Fifth avenue establishment down to the cellar
lodging-houses of the Five Points, all boarding-houses are alike in this
respect. Their success in tormenting their victims depends upon the
susceptibility and refinement of feeling and taste on the part of the
latter.

Landladies and boarders are mutually suspicious of each other. The
landlady constantly suspects her guest of a desire to escape from her
clutches with unpaid bills. The latter is always on the look-out for
some omission on the part of the hostess to comply with the letter of her
contract. Landladies are frequently swindled by adventurers of both
sexes, and guests most commonly find that the hostess does not comply
very strictly with her bargain. Furthermore, the boarder has not only to
endure his own troubles, but those of the landlady as well. Her sorrows
are unending, and she pours them out to him at every o