New York is a vast boarding-house. Let him who doubts this assertion turn to the columns of the Herald, and there read its confirmation in the long columns of advertisements of “Boarders wanted,” which adorn that sheet. Or, better still, let him insert an advertisement in the aforesaid Herald, applying for board, and he will find himself in receipt of a mail next morning that will tax the postman’s utmost capacity. The boarding-houses of New York are a feature, and not the pleasantest one, of the great city. How many there are, is not known, but in some localities they cover both sides of the street for several blocks. Those which are termed fashionable, and which imitate the expensiveness of the hotels without furnishing a tithe of their comforts, are located in the Fifth avenue, Broadway, and the Fourth avenue, or near those streets. Some are showily furnished as to the public rooms, and are conducted in seemingly elegant style, but the proprietress, for it is generally a woman who is at the head of these establishments, pays for all this show by economizing in the table and other things essential to comfort. The really “elegant establishments,” where magnificence of display is combined with a good table and substantial comfort in other respects, may be almost named in a breath.

Whether fashionable or unfashionable, all boarding-houses are alike. They are supremely uncomfortable. The boarder is never really satisfied, and lives in a state of perpetual warfare with his landlady. The landlady, on her part, takes care that her guests shall not be too comfortable. People generally become accustomed to this feverish mode of life; so accustomed to it indeed that they cannot exist without it. They find a sort of positive pleasure in boarding-house quarrels, and would not be able to exist without the excitement of them.

The majority of boarders in the city are persons who have not the means to live in their own houses. Others there are, who fancy they have less trouble in boarding than in keeping their own establishments. This is a singular but common delusion, and its victims endure with what patience they can the wretched fare, the constant changes, and the uninterrupted inconvenience and strife of a boarding-house, and imagine all the while that they are experiencing less trouble and annoyance than they 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 opportunity. He dare not refuse to listen, for his experience teaches him that his hostess will find a way to punish him for his unfeeling conduct. It is of no use to change his quarters, for he may fare worse in this respect at the next place. And so he submits, and grows peevish and fretful, and even bald and gray over the woes of his tormentor. He consoles himself with one thought—in the next world landladies cease from troubling and boarding-houses do not exist.

All boarding-houses begin to fill up for the winter about the first of October. Few of the proprietors have any trouble in filling their establishments, as there is generally a rush of strangers to the city at that time. The majority of boarders change their quarters every fall, if they do not do so oftener. At first, the table is well supplied with good fare, the attendance is excellent, and the proprietress as obliging as one can wish. This continues until the house is full, and the guests have made arrangements which would render a removal inconvenient. Then a change comes over the establishment. The attendance becomes inferior. The landlady cannot afford to keep so many servants, and the best in the house are discharged. The fare becomes poor and scanty, and there begin to appear dishes upon which the landlady has exercised an amount of ingenuity which is astounding. They are fearfully and wonderfully compounded, and it is best to ask no questions about them. The landlady keeps a keen watch over the table at such times; and woe to him who slights or turns up his nose at these dishes. She is sorry Mr. X---’s appetite is so delicate; but really her prices of board do not permit her to rival Delmonico or the Fifth Avenue Hotel in her table. Mr. P---, who was worth his millions, and who boarded with her for ten years, was very fond of that dish, and Mr. P--- was a regular bon vivant, if there ever was one. Hang your head, friend X---, mutter some incoherent excuse, gulp down your fair share of the dish in question--and fast the next time it makes its appearance at the table.

UNION SQUARE.

The landlady has shrewdly calculated the chances of retaining her boarders. She knows that few care to or can change in the middle of the season, when all the other houses are full; and that they will hang on to her establishment until the spring. If they do not come back the next fall, others will, and as the population is large, she can play the same game upon a fresh set of victims for many years to come. It is of no use to complain. She knows human nature better than you do, and she adheres rigidly to her programme, grimly replying to your tale of woes, that, if you do not like her establishment, you can go elsewhere. You would go if you could find a better place; but you know they are all alike. So you make up your mind to endure your discomforts until May, with her smiling face, calls you into the country.

Boarding-houses allow their guests a brief respite in the summer. The city is then comparatively deserted, and the most of these “highly respectable” establishments are very much in want of inmates. Expenses are heavy and receipts light then, and the landladies offer an unusual degree of comfort to those who will help them to tide over this dull season.

As regards the ferreting out of impropriety on the part of her guests, the New York landlady is unequalled by the most skilful detective in the city. She doubts the character of every woman beneath her roof; but in spite of her acuteness she is often deceived, and it may be safely asserted that the boarding-houses into which improper characters do not sometimes find their way are very few. It is simply impossible to keep them out. The average boarding-house contains a goodly number of men who are so many objects of the designs of the adventurers. Again, if the adventuress wishes to maintain the guise of respectability, she must have a respectable home, and this the boarding-house affords her. One is struck with the great number of handsome young widows who are to be found in these establishments. Sometimes they do not assume the character of a widow, but claim to be the wives of men absent in the distant Territories, or in Europe, and pretend to receive letters and remittances from them. The majority of these women are adventuresses, and they make their living in a way they do not care to have known. They conduct themselves with the utmost outward propriety in the house, and disarm even the suspicious landlady by their ladylike deportment. They are ripe for an intrigue with any man in the house, and as their object is simply to make money, they care little for an exposure if that object be attained.