H a l l r o u m a n i a , o r T h e B o a r d e r l a n d

by Irvin S. Cobb.

Illustration by O. Cesare.

HE Boarderland is a drear domain bounded on the north by top-floor bedrooms, lying above the frost-line, because the steam register always gets discouraged and quits one story below. It is bounded on the south by basement dining-rooms, where it is night six months a year and just before daylight the rest of the time; on the east by an entrance hall agreeably perfumed with the combined aroma of kerosene, mother-of-onion, veteran linoleum and the stuffing in the red-plush sofa, and on the west by a parlor nine feet wide and thirty-two feet long, with one window in it and a doctor’s sign in the window. The doctor’s private office lies just back of the parlor, so the parlor smells mildewed when the connecting door is closed and iodoformed when it’s open.

Boarders, as the natives of this land are commonly called, are never allowed in the parlor except once, that occasion being when they first apply for board. Thereafter they entertain their company on the front stoop in the summer and on the telephone in the winter. Winter company is the more expensive.

“Thereafter they entertain their company on the front stoop.”

The ruling classes of Hallroumania are known as Landladies and may be classed generally into the following subdivisions: Landladies who belong to Old Southern Families and formerly rode in Their Own Carriages, but suffered Heavy Financial Reverses through the Cruel War brought on By Your Mister Lincoln; Landladies who never married and don’t regret it; Landladies who did marry and frequently regret it; Landladies who have no use for husbands, and Landladies who have husbands and use them to take the dog out.

The inhabitants are indeed a weird race, including unrecognized geniuses, earnest hopers, chronic grouches, back files and innocent bystanders; also single gentlemen who are believed to have had what is known as A PAST, and who are suspected of leading the dissipated life because they come in of an evening with the odor of rum and Business Men’s Lunch on their breath; also young women of undoubted dramatic power, who won the first prize for elocution at the Rome Centre School of Expression and came on two winters ago to put Julia Marlowe out of the business, but are being kept back temporarily owing to a jealous compact on the part of the theatrical syndicate; also other young women who think they are entitled to bird-like notes because they had the thrush once, and were sent here at heavy expense by fond parents who imagine New York as a place full of talented voice-plumbers who know how to weld Nellie Melba pipes on a Ruth Ann larynx; also single ladies who spend part of the time drying handkerchiefs on the window-panes and doing light laundry work in a toothbrush-mug, and the rest of the time making life brighter and sweeter for a pug dog with the asthma.

Also dashing gents connected with leading brokerage offices downtown, who wear priceless marquise rings on the little finger of the right hand, and go secretly away at night owing for two weeks; also persons of both sexes who have been misunderstood by the world and crave A Little Sympathy—that is all; also ladies who are constantly on the verge of moving to a perfectly delightful place up in Ninety-third Street because a fur-bearing foreigner has opened a Pants-Pressery next door and the neighborhood is rapidly losing its tone; also, just plain boarders.

A boarder is often likened to a worm. And this is a proper comparison if it is a tapeworm that is meant, because a tapeworm always knows in advance what it is going to have for dinner, and so does a boarder. For instance, he knows that on Monday night he will have a New England boiled dinner that tastes like the family wash on Friday night, one gill and part of the dorsal fin of a boiled fish, and on Sunday evening that nourishing repast known as cold Sunday-night tea.

This cold tea is probably the most noted of the established institutions of Hallroumania, being constituted as follows: A dank cold platter, veneered at rare intervals with specimens of the Old Red Corned-Beef Period of Geology, cut to the generous thickness of gold leaf; a peculiar variety of potato-salad, in a free state of perspiration and garnished at intervals with slices of pickled beets, like a few red chips strewn on the kitty; four small squares of petrified pastry (not suitable for food, but could be given to hardy children to cut their teeth on); a prune-floater, bloated up and nine days drowned in its own juice; a cup of ostensible tea.

The common recreations of The Boarderland are rushing the washstand-duck in a dress-suit case; wondering how the other boarders can afford the clothes they wear; progressive knocking and raising scandals from the slip. The prevalent disease is Furnished Rheumatism, brought on by living in a single-breasted apartment, and is marked by a cramped, choking sensation, the symptoms being almost identical with those of Harlem Flatulency.

Drawn by Henry Reuterdahl.

“THE FIGHT OF TO-MORROW”

From a painting on the wardroom bulkhead of the Battleship “New Jersey.”