You may view them also in the light of establishments for
the manufacture and distribution of domestic perfumery, payment for
which is never exacted at the moment of its involuntary purchase, but is
left to be collected by a doctor,--who calls upon you during the winter,
levies on you with a lancet, and distrains upon your viscera with a
compound cathartic pill.
It is claimed, that, in addition to the victims who pay egregious rents
for boarding-house beds in order that they may have a place to store
their documents and demi-johns, there are other permanent occupants of
these houses. As, for example, Irish chambermaids, who subtract a few
moments from the morning half-hour given to drinking the remnants of
your whiskey, and devote them to cleaning up your room. Also a very
strange being, peculiar to Washington boarding-houses, who is never
visible at any time, and is only heard stumbling up-stairs about four
o'clock in the morning. Also beldames of incalculable antiquity,--a
regular allowance of one to each boarding-house,--who flit noiselessly
and unceasingly about the passages and up and down the stairways,
admonishing you of their presence by a ghostly sniffle, which always
frightens you, and prevents you from running into them and knocking them
down.
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