Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-08-01
SUMMER HOTEL LIFE.
1t Generates Bad Manners in Some of
the Mildest People.
From the Boston Gazette.

From the Boston Gazette.
If people could only be vaccinated to prevent
contagion from bad manners there would be less
danger from summer hotel life; but the dis
ease, though prevalent, seems to be under no
control and though we start from the doors of
our city homes with no hint of the malaria Of
malice, envy, false pretense, or greediness, we
come back in the fall with our systems so full
OF 1t that 1t is far into the winter of our own
hearthstones before it can be eradicated. Mrs.
Placid may be nice little woman with modest
desires and manners, her little soul serenely
above anything but the welfare Of the little
Placids and Placid pater familias, who are
correspondingly modest and serene Before
they have been one week in the summer hotel
Mrs. T. adopts an aggressive manner toward
one family, supercilious one toward another
toadles to third and initiates fourth: her
nice little manner changes to a bad big man
ner and there Is as grand a Transformation
scene as that OF the ugly princess when the
toads began to drop from her mouth. She has
been a woman who heretofore has carefully
refrained from praising hnr husband or blam-
ing her servants in public; but now
from the remotest corner of the nurses
dining room to the outer edge of the front
piazza, Plymouth Rock pants are not more
widely advertised than is the fact that Placid is
just as attentive as when he was courting and
wears winter fannels all summer on account of
an inherited tendency toward cholera morbus.
and that her cooks have all been escaped luna
tics and her housemads Pinkerton's detectives
IN disguise. She bawls to her children loudly
from all parts of the hotel, complains of the
service and food, brushes the call bows with
her tones and makes a vain attempt to boss the
clerk. And old Placid grows pompous; he tells
little bigger story every night in the bar
room and begins to speak in a fippant manner
OF Mrs. Placid. a thing he has never attempted
nor thought of before. He places his income
little higher than it really is and his religious
principles little lower than they really are
He says ugly things about Jones, who is making
more show than he Is, and patronIzes Smith
who boards at a smaller house and walks to the
train. he thinks II commendable to insist on
having his moneys worth, from the sound of
the first rising bell to the tinkle of the last
pitcher OF ice water, and says .'Dammet' with
frequency that brings even his equally evil
mmunication-corrupted wife up with a Jerk.
And the little Placidsi Peevishness settles in
their tones and small-siZed envy in their hearts
They begin to sass people in parlor and on
piazza; from quiet, well-bred children they
turn into blood-curdling screechers who
trip old ladies and nurse maids up with
strings, cut hammock cords, and walk with re-
sounding steps and whacks through the corri-
doris In the early morning. And not the Placid
family alone loses Its individuality in the sum-
mer hotel. Heretofore quiet and digrified old
tiuence ofsome old centenarian merry-go-rounI
who finds III the summers fitting compensa-
ton for lonely winters brooding Reserved
noiseless people learn to slam their doors, to
hum as they walk briskly by other peoples
doors, grow familiar with the hotel clerks
stare at new corners, and pull their chairs from
one end of the piazza to the other, as if in de
tiance of the hotel world in general. Little
Mrs. Pigeon, Y po never has had days or an
hours uneasiness about her Pigeon, grows sul-
len and suspicious under the influence of some
cold gray-eyed woman; and Pigeon himself,
usually an innocent and unoffending man,
grows worthy of suspicion under the tutelage
of some old, hardened habitue of the hotel,
who watches this evolution of a rascal with the
same amused indifference that an old fisher
man feels at the writhes and flaps of the bright
eyed little trout on his hook. And the conta-
gion goes on till hardly person escapes; yet
families rush joyfully into its jaws, and the
hotel clerks keep up the languid murmur, IAN
full; never had such a season.