River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1883-09-13
THE HOTEL MOTHER.
With Some Notes on her Billiard
room son and Piazza Daughter.

al insure that she is well connected"
remarked Mrs. Haphazard; ''she wears
the most beautiful diamonds every
morning" Mrs Fungus was the most
gorgeous figure in the hotel. She
breakfasted in black velvet gown, with
train and short sleeves, and she com
monty dined in blue satin. She would
have been called very pretty, but for a
somewhat aggressive stare in her round
light eyes, and fixity in the lines of
her graceful mouth and chin which sug-
1ested not composure so much as de-
fiance. You could not look-at her fair
skin and banged hair, and her super
fluffy of gems and gold chains, or listen
to her laugh and her grammar, without
thinking of translated barmaid. Bat
she was perfectly good-natured and
unaffected. If her manners were not
fine, they were atleast easy; being those
which had came to her in the course OF
nature. She was fond of talking to any
body who would accept her company,
and was an especial iavorite with
transient young men, who
found her pleasant
relief from the monofony Of the smok-
ing-room, and spoke of her as "gay."
Most of the boarders felt in looking at
her as Carlyle's raw Scotch maid felt
when, being shown Virgin and Child
in the National Gallery, she could only
exclaim: 80 my! how expensivew Mrs.
Fungus did not like saint; but there
was no real harm in her. She never
walked abroad; sho never drove; she
never read; she never was seen with
needle. She passed the morning on the
piazza the afternoon and evening in the
public parlor, talking loud, if she had
anyone to ralk to, and Otherwise con-
tentedly taking exercise in rocking
chair. The last thing she thought OF was
the children. The late Mr.. Fungus had
left her several pledges of affection, and
she left them entirely to Sarah, who in
turn generally left taem alone, though
sometimes-upo what occult principle
the boarders never could discover-she
shook them. Thus 1t happened that the
children of Mrs. Fungus bee me the ty-
rants OF the establishment. They played
horse in the corridors. They jumped in
the parlor. They put the piano out of
tune, and gdislocated the sofa springs,
and broke the croQuet mallets.
They stripped Ethe flower borders, and
were a terror to all domestic animals
They rushed to the dining room as soon
as the doors were open, gave extensive
orders, scrambled for the dessert, filled
the neighboring guests with disgust, and
drove the walters to desperation. The
complaints of their noise and their tres
IL 80 al
but there was no remedy short of eX
polling the family. 1t never entered
the head of Mrs. Fungus that for their
own sake the children ought to be taught
respect for the rights Of others. or that
they had anything to gain by acquiring
selt-contrOl.
Mrs. Fungus will be recognized by
every visitor at Saratoga, at Long Branch,
at the White Mountains, at the Virginia
Springs, at all the fashionable resorts of
the United States; for she pervades all
sections, and she fourishes in The de-
velopmeut of a series of types evolved
from rude social origin, and tending
toward q complex product not yet clear
~ discerned. She is only q little re-
moved from the primitive and labOri-
GUS ignoramus; changed conditions OF
existence have affected her imperfectly;
yet learned the new ones appropriate
to her new environment. Ia the next
generation we shall observe marked adj
vance. The children who are now the nlu-
sance oil hotel corridors will be the swells
ofthe billiard room and the bellies of the
piazza, Young Fungus will never be q
gentleman, but he will early assume to
be a connoisseur in coats, cigars, saddle
horses, and lawn-tennis. He will haunt
hotels as closely as his mother, for what
other home than hotel has he ever
known?-and there he will breakfast
late, and call the barkeeper by his first
name, and take a leading and dogmatlc
part in the extraordinary vapid, copious,
and unlettered conversation which Is to
be heard only in the office of hotels and
livery stables. He will be only fop
and fool. with no thought but his own
amusement; whether he will be any
thing else will depend upon the freaks
Of fortune-especially his luck in bus
mess and his luck in marriage. He will
never be an interesting fellow. His sis
ter will at least be an object ofattraction
From q troublesome and over-dressed
child, she will grow into pert miss,
with profound dislespect for her
mother, and a saucy answer for strange
gentlemen who try to amuse themselves
with her. She will quickly catch
the accent and manner of
class much better educated than her
own, she will learn, before she has put
on long dresses, that diamonds at break
fast are in bad style; at fourteen she
will be remarked for the elegance other
costumes; at fifteen she will have car
ried self-culture to the point of reading
novels in ''The Seaside Library" and,
under favoring circumstances, she may
even go so far as the lighter publications
of the "Franklin Square Series" After
a brief transition period of giggling fir
tations with BOYS, she will suddenly APP
pear at the summer hotel as an expert
enced Young lady, and will take her
place naturally in the category of piazza
girls. Like the rest ofthose companion
able virgins, her object in life will be to
have good time. A good time implies
a young man, with whom she will always
be ready for promenade outside the
parlor windows, a whispered tete-a- tete
in dark corner, moonlight ride, an
unreasonable row on the lake, or
mound of French candy IN the recesses
of a thicket As for Mrs. Fungus, she,
poor woman, will have gone off sadly
when these nights of heartlessness
and futile daliance arrive; stray
bachelors and commercial travellers will
no longer find her gay" her voice will
be har5her, but her laugh will be rare,
and there will be marks of trouble on
her face. Her children will despise her
acquaintance, and be careful not TO pre-
sent to her their own. She will know
little or nothing of her sons pursuits
She will wait alone on the piazza till
midnight, while her daughter is out with
a gentleman whose name she has never
heard; and when the truant pair appear,
the cavalier will not notice the old lady,
and the girl will offer no remark. What
will the girl be like in mature life? VIII
she bring up children after the pattern
of herself, and teach them as she was
aught, that they are no domestic duties
for either old young? The civilization
which has evolved in order the hotel
mother and the piazza girl is too new to
show in the next stage of development;
out it ought to be something remarkable.
N. Y. Tribune.
one cyclone in Twenty-Five