CHAPTER XVI.

Boarding versus Housekeeping.

YOUNG couple often find it convenient to board during the first years of their married life. There is something to be said in behalf of this arrangement. If they are starting with a very small capital, they can more definitely manage their expenses at first, and by careful economy can lay up enough to begin in their own house later on. If they have the good fortune to get into the right kind of house, especially if they can be accommodated in the home of some pleasant people, who do not take other boarders, the arrangement may turn out an exceedingly agreeable one for all parties. Still, boarding, no matter how ideal it may be, is only a step toward the home-making, and is not like home itself. It is living in a tent instead of setting up a home.

People who board seldom have a sense of permanency in their domestic life. They live in trunks and their aim is to have as few portable possessions as possible, so that they may break camp and change their quarters, if needful, at a moment's notice. There is a delightful sense of privacy when one turns the key in one's own latch, and sits down at one's own table, and lives under one's own vine and fig tree, which one cannot have in the nomadic life of the boarding house or hotel. Of course, if people who board have a sufficient income to warrant their making their abode in a large and beautiful hotel, they will be saved much of the drudgery and many of the inconveniences of life in their own house. In a hotel you touch a bell; and, presto, an obliging person is at your elbow to know what your serene highness may desire.

Everything is brought to you; you sit down at a table a queen might envy, and order a sumptuous repast from a bill of fare varied enough to make a banquet for princes and great people generally. You fare sumptuously every day, and to suit the splendor about you, you wear neat attire and cannot be seen at any time out of your own room in a negligée costume. The whole thing has much the aspect of life in an Arabian night's entertainment, where obedient genii are always ready to come at a call and furnish everything the traveler can possibly desire. And you must be always on dress parade to some extent.

But even with all this, hotel fare becomes monotonous, and the bustle of hotel life is not so satisfactory as the retirement of a home of one's own. In the smaller

boarding houses conveniences are, of course, much more limited; service is not always up to the mark, and even at the best of times, the menu palls upon one's appetite. One learns that Monday's, Tuesday's and Wednesday's bill of fare is regulated by a law exact as that of the Medes and Persians. One grows tired of seeing the trim maiden ladies and the elderly widows in black gowns, and the nice

"Cannot be seen at any time out of your own room in negligée costume."

young men, and the pretty belles, who make up the coterie around the boardinghouse table, and one sighs for a little place of one's very own.

The women whose homes are in the boarding house, having comparatively little to engage their attention, become interested in small things. They talk on trivialities; the talk sometimes grows personal; there are feuds and opposite sides,