Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-10-11
BOARDING HOUSE BEATS

SikuanI the washing toii
boarding housekeeper has to be to avoid
oeing stuns'a, remarked the mistress OF
boarding establisbnent of the sort termed
fashionable Ia thefnorthwest section. THE
regular boarding shouse beats differ from
each other oily in the degree of their hyp-
motto power,rlSo tospeak, and in the extent
Oh their piausibility and ingenuity.
Last January good-looking, well-dress-
ed and exceedingly well-mannered young
man drove up to my house in a cab. He
was from San Francisco, he told me, and
ne wanted two well-furnished rooms. He
remarked in an off-hand way that he would
be In Washington until the beginning of
attending to some land office bust
ness for his father, and that he despised
hotel life. 1 had the sort Of rooms he
wanted, and they pleased him so much
tnat ne deposited himself, his Gladstone
Dag ana MS walking stick and umbrella IN
them Immediately. He exhibited four quite
Iesuiar looking trunk checks with san
FRANCISCO stamped upon them, and asked
me the address Of the nearest express Of
nee, so that he could go out and have his
baggage sent up. The baggage did not ar
rive On tnat day nor on the next day, al
though the young man had made himself
pretty we'll at home, having his coffee
served TO him in bed at or 10 o'clock in
me morning, coming down stairs for break
1ast at any time he chose, amusing himself
at the piano-he was a good performer-and
SO on. IN the second day he came to me
with distressed look, telling me he had
oeen down to the station to look after his
trunks' which. he said had followed him
On the traln after the one he had taken
rom Cnlcaso, and that he had found out
tnat the trunks had been mixed up in
wreck the story Of which he showed me
IN a newspaper clipping. The baggage
master at the station had told him, he went
trI1yt be oil
to Washington within two or three days.
he ieit, however, he told me with great
Irankness, that l should be apprised of his
tnorough responsibility, and asked me to
o oeFephone 10 prominent official in the land
once. lnquiring about him l quite be-
GeVeo the young mans story. but, to take
every precaution, did telephone to the Of
ncfal named. and was informed that my
guest was as reliable as the son Of Call
1ornla millionaire could possibly be. 1 was
so treasured that even when his baggage
ala not arrive for another week 1 felt no
uneasaness one evening he slipped out
WIN MS Gladstone bag and his walking
stick and umbrella and when he did not
return on the following day 1 went to the
iand once official and described him. My
description. of course. didn't in the least
taiiy with that of the actual son Of the
California millionaire. l should like to see
the individual who could get into nv house.
without paying in advance, on the strength
or handful Of trunk checks, now.
some OF the women boarding house
beats, OF whom. 1 grieve to say, there are
many In Washington, exhibit quite as
much, II not more, ingenuity than the men.
one OF them caught me only last year
1or no less than three months accommo-
cations In one of my best rooms by means
OF a clever dodge. She paid me for two
weeks In advance. and then she settled
herself upon me in very shrewd way.
she told me that she was engaged in writ
ing novel of Washington life for a famous
Boston f1rm of publishers, and she showed
me letter from this firm in which it was
clearly stated that she was to receive $500
In advance royalties upon her novel as
soon as 1t was finished 1t was the chance
OF her life TOT gain literary fame, she told
me, and when she, asked me to defer pre-
sentation of her bill until she obtained her
$S'D In ADVANCE upon her completed novel |
agreed to the proposition, for the young
woman had immensely winning ways She
seemed to work pretty hard upon her novel,
100, and every evening she would call me
In her room and read to me the charters
that she had written during the day. Well,
the work sounded pretty fine, and 1 con-
cluded that she really was a singularly
GIFTED woman, and that she would be
mighty grateful to me for trusting her
When she became great and famous as
fiction writer. After She had been with
me for three months, however, not only
getting the best of everything, but OBJ
tanning many loans of fives and .ens from
me for pin money, she failed to come back
one day. She had taken her belongings
out of the house piecemeaI, but had left
the uncompleted manuscript Of her novel
behind her. l wrapped the manuscript up
and mailed 1t to the Boston firm of pub
fishers she had named, telling them In an
lncioseo letter or the young woman's dis
appearance. The publishers wrote back
that the manuscript was a pretty tidy bit
of penmanship, and that it was COPY
word for word, of a famous novel of Wash
1ngton life, that had been in book form for
number of years. And there I had been
holding up my hands in ecstatic apprecia-
ton OF that young womans daily stunt of
copying every night for several months!
had never felt quite SO much like fool
before.
"A few years ago a middle-aged woman
planted herself upon me for four months by
telling me that she had won a suit against
a Baltimore street railway company for
$1,000 for injuries sustained. She was so
plausible. and showed me so many letters
from Baltimore firm of lawyers. which
recounted the formalities' which they mad
to undergo before they could turn over the
$1,000 to her, that ! unhesitatingly trusted
her for four months accommodat tons
When 1t became pretty obvious to me- how
ever that the woman was only trifling with
me, pressed her strongly for payment on
the threat of holding her baggage. where
upon she Immediately repaired to the police
station and complained that several hun
dred dollars worth of valuable laces had
been stolen from her trunks in my house
The detectives were poking about question
ing the servants for days afterward and to
save further trouble I was forced to let the
woman take her baggage away without re-
ceiving penny from her.
"It Is simply astonishing how many beats
there are going about Washington. who. on
pretense of wanting to engage boarding
house accommoda tons, stipulate that they
must first sample the meals There is no
sort of protection against this class of
swindlers, for it has become quite the Gus
tom of habitual boarding house dodgers in
Washington to try the table before actu-
ally engaging rooms One evening about a
month ago three Incorporating young men
called upon me to engage accommodations
as they said, for themselves and three other
Columbian law school Students They crit
ically inspected the third-fioor rooms, and
finally said that they'd take three of them
on condition that they found the table sat
isfactory' They said that before making
final arrangements they'd want to try ali
three of the meals-breakfast luncheon and
dinner-for fear that they might move their
gear to a house the table of which proved
not to their taste. had often been bitten
in this way but these youths were such
conventionally perfect types of students
that cordially invited them to sample nv
table on the following day. They were at
all three of the meals on the next day, and