Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-15

me. Then she resisted; the soapdlsh. she ar
gued, could be OF no use to me- 1 must leave
it, and at last, when persisted in my resolve,
she let me of with couple of shillings"
But why?''
because the cracked soap dish was to her
source of revenue. Every lodger for years had
been bled on account of that crack to the tune
of 30 shillings, and that cracked soap dish was
worth anypounds per annum TO that wretched
woman" Then, with sudden tightening OF
muscles at the corners of his mouth, he added.
~ know their tricks and their waysl / have
been brought up among iandladies, as Romulus
was nursed by wolf, and Jupiter was reared
ameng goats"
Il suppose there are good lodging house
keepers as well as bad ones" said Salome,
laughing.
CHARITY hopeth all things" answered Philip,
grlmly, "but never came across one. Just as
colliers acquire peculiar stoop and walk, and
horse dealers a special twist in conscience, and
sailors peculiar waddle, engendeTed by their
professions, SO does lodging house keeping pro-
duce warp and crick and callousness in women
with which they were not born. You do not
know what it is, you cannot know what it is, to
be brought up and to form ones opinions
among landladies. 1t forces one to see the
world, to contemplate life through their me-
dium as through lenses that break and distort
all rays. Do you recall what the King of Israel
said when the King of Syria sent to him
Naaman to be healed of his leprosyR"
YES" answered Salome, "'See how he seek
eth quarrel against me-"
Exactly. Aud those who live in furnished
lodgings are kept continually in the King Of
Israel's frame of mind. Whatever the land
| lady does whatever she leaves undone, when
| she rolls her eyes round the room, when she
sweeps with them the carpet, one is always
saying to ones self, see how this woman seek
| eth quarrel against me. Landladies are the
cantharides of our nineteenth century civiliza-
ton the great source of blister and irritation.
| Even a man of means who has not to count his
| shillings must feel his wretchedness in lodg-
ings; but consider the apprehensions. the un-
| rest that must possess a man, pinched in his
| circumstances, who lives among landladies.
| Her eYe," continued Philip who had warmed
| to his subject, sis ever searching for spots on
the carpet, fraying of sofa edges, tears in the
| curtains, scratches in the mahogany, chips
in the marble mantelpiece. l think it was
| among Quarle's emblems that saw picture
| of mans career among traps and snares on
| every side. In lodgings every article OF furni-
| ture is gin ready to snap on you If you use
| it"
Then Philip took two hyacinth glasses, one
i yellow, the other blue, But put down that
which was blue, and took up another that was
yellow, not for aesthetic prediction, but to
prolong the time. 1t was real relief to him to
unburden his memory of Its gall, to go through
4 his recollections. like Jew on the Paschal
preparation, searching for and casting out
| every scrap of sour leaven.
~ dare say you are wondering, Miss Gus
worth" he said ''to what this preamble on
landladies is leading"
Salome looked amused and puzzled; SO per-
| haps is the reader.
Philip had been, as he said, for so many years
| in furnished lodgings, and had for so many
years had before his eyes nothing but pros
pect of spending all his days in them, and of
| expiring in the arms of lodging-house keepers,
| that he had come to loathe the life. Now that
| his financial position was altered, and before
him opened career of unhampered and un.
saured by pecuniary difficulties. desire woke
| up in him to enjoy more cheerful, social life
| than that of his experience. Now the differ
ence between the days in his uncle's house at
Mergatroyd and those he had spent in lodgings
at Nottingham did not differ radically. 1t was
true that he no longer had the tongue of a land
! lady hanging over his head like the sword OF
| Damocles, but his day was no brighter, quite
as colorless.
He was beneath the arme roof with an old
lady who belonged, as his suspicious eye told
him, to the same clay as that out of which the
landlady is modelled. only circumstances had
not developed in her the pugnacity and acridity
| Of the class. In herself, an uninteresting per
son, whom only the love and respect of hel
daughters could invest with any favor. But
those daughters were both charming. Hi:
prejudice against Salome was gone completely