Smyrna times., 1890-08-06
The Matrimonial Boarding
house.
BY HENRY CLEVELAND WOOD.

BY HENRY CLEVELAND WOOD.
l do not know how it came about,
but it seemed the choice of almost
every young married couple to take mp
their abode with Mrs. Bins, and begin
life under her motherly guidance.
For several successive years the
usual programme had been the church,
a bridal tour, then Mrs. Bins, until it
would have been considered as bad
form to have omitted one as the other
of these three preliminaries to matri-
mOnial bliss.
After a sojOurn of few months or a
year, perhaps, at this excellent lady's
dOmicile, these couples gradually
drifted off into the rOomy, common
place existence that relentlessly over
takes and subdues even the most SEN
timental of beings, while others, in the
full infatuation of loves sweet dream,
came and supplanted them. So goes
the world.
Strange to relate--and doubtless to the
alleged lasting unbelief of all other
landladies--Mrs. Bins made money
do not mean that she became a capi-
talist, or even attained that enviable
reputation of making a corner-even
in hash-a privilege (the corner-mak-
ing) enjoyed by all moneyed powers;
but l mean that each year she was
able to lay aside modest sum toward
the purchasing of small home, which
was to be the reward and Joy of her
old age.
am unable to state whether Mrs.
Bins was especially shrewd in her ne.
gOtiatiOns with the venders of such
commodities as a boarding house de.
mands and its bOarders generally alb
jure, or whether her newly.mated
boarders, absorbed in each other, and
and fed by the tender flame of love
than the practical beguilements of the
table, made the matter of provisions
minor one. l can simply state that
Mrs. Bins found the boarding house a
profitable occupation.
A bit of wisdom that Mrs. Bins prac-
ticed with gratifying success was the
wearing of a cheerful and smiling
countenance. There were never anv
frOwns or gloomy looks dealt out of
her boarders, and they, in turn, sell
dom had the temerity to introduce
them into Mrs. Bins jolly presence !;
therefore, when the biscuit occasion
ally exhibited violent symptoms of
jaundice, or the coffee gave unmistak-
able evidences of prohibition tenden-
cies, Mrs. Bins would laughingly ex-
plain the verdency of new "help-
strange misnOmer it sometimes proves.
Thus the error would escape the
severe censure it might otherwise have
drawn to itself and its accessory.
Mrs. Bins reasoned very logically
that the people in a happy frame of
mind were much easier to get alcng
with than those of misanthropic turn.
Even with these, however, she was
in measure, quite successful; for,
had this not been the case, Squire Jay
would have severely taxed her good
nature and her patience.
The Squire was a grabbed, crusty,
old bachelor who had boarded with
Mrs. Bins for the past fifteen years,
and during that time had threatened
regularly, on an average of once a
week, to leave.
Squire Jay and Mrs. Bins were liv-
ing exDOnents of that time honored
adage: Extremes will meet" The
more facetious of the boarders, among
themselves, called them Sunshine and
Shadow.
The Squire was at all times beset by
melancholy fOrebodings and given to
dismal predictions. TO be guilty of a
paradox, his only pleasure was in be-
ing miserable. Not only did foreign
depressing influences of presaged food,
famine and pestelence weigh him
down, but also the daily ones to which
he was subjected. None were, per-
hups, so great burden as the con-
slant exhibitions of matrimonial felic-
ity to which he was ruthlessly subiec-
ted.
If he took a thoughtful turn in the
yard, he was likely to stumble on some
silly couple, arm in arm, billing and
cooling and staring the moon out of
cOuntenance if he sought the seclu-
sion of his own room, most probably
an idiOtic pair across the hall or in the
parlOr below would annihilate the ST.
lence and serenity with a love-sick
ballad or duet If he found himself at
the table, his appetite was liable-it
never quite reached that point-to be
impaired by hearing low-uttered pet
names exchanged by devoted couples.
The surroundings generally were
made obnoxious by these constant sug-
gestiOns of matrimony, State which
the Squire had long regarded in the
same light he did lunacy, only in the
latter the victims are not always res
pOnsible for their acts and consequent
ly are less to be censured. s..
In revenge for all these sentimental
annOyances, which were thrust, so to
speak, upon his retired and solitary
state of preferred single-bIessedness,
Squire Jay had but one recourse-he
snOred. If his waking moments were
? disturbed, so we're his sleeping mo.
ments. If their twaddle was particu.
larly offensive or any especial day, he
snored louder on that especial night.
1t was matter ofhistorioal accuracy,
in the annals of Mrs. Bins boarding.
house, that on one occasion nervous
lodger, in the room above the Sduire's
had descended to the floor below, pistol
in hand, firmly believing that burg.
lars were saving an entrance into the
house, and that an investigation proved
it to be only the Squire indulging in a
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