Puck — August 28, 1878 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PUCK. THE ‘NEW YORK BOARDING- HOUSE. A TERRIBLE EXPOSE. FULL DETAILS, R. BENNY, who is a clerk in a West Broadway dry-goods establishment, told a Puck reporter last night that since he has changed his boarding-house he is willing to ve) divulge the “ horrible truth ” concerning it. He | thinks that among the tens of thousands of | y2ung men who entrust themselves to the care of strange boarding-houses in New York ‘there will be found a few, at least, who will accord him sympathy. Tue Exiciste Location. ‘The house was close to the upper end of Seventh Avenue, and he engaged rooms for himself and wife there, because the cars that passed the house also passed the store. The mistress of the house was a red-haired woman, who was believed to be Irish, but told different people different stories of her origin. (Mr. Benny declares she was equally unreliable about everything.) She wore silk dressess plotched with grease, and slopped about the house in rundown slippers. Her husband was a French- man, and she used to boast that she spoke French as well as he did. At one time, while at the tea-tray at meal times, she would exclaim: “Maggie! Bridget! Vooly-voo le fashettc!— that manes run and get the coffee;” and again she would announce: ‘ Vooly-voo le forshette, Bridget; that manes, shut the dure afore we all fraze to dith!” She had three weak-eyed children, and a weak-eyed poodle-dog, and they made the boarders sick. Her husband was introduced to every one as the proprietor of a restaurant down-town. He borrowed small change from the boarders. Major Smiley, the oldest boarder, used to waylay his com- panions in distress, in the hallway outside the dining-room, and whisper that ‘when the time came" he would disclose the landlord’s real occupation. It was believed that the land- lord owed him seven dollars in small change. ‘The Major was feeble and weak about most matters, but he wow/d have well-aired bedding. He used to dart in at the front door and rush up to his room half-an-hour after the landlady, believing him down-town, had made up his still warm bed, and then he would throw the sheets, | and pillows, and mattrasses out of the window into the yard, or down the hallway stairs. ‘The boarders swore by the Major and sent him anonymous letters of thanks. Everybody was impatient to hear from him the truth about the landlord. THE CHAMPION WEAKENS. Six months after Mr, Benny engaged board at the house the Major fell illand died. Around his bedside, in the last night of his life, the boarders stealthily gathered. ‘Tell us!” whis- pered Mr. Benny, ‘the truth about the land- lord. Doesn't he really keep a restaurant ?” The Major, whose extremities were already cold, and whose speech was thickening, beckon- ed his weeping friends closer to his bedside and murmured: Tue TRuTH. “No! He is a journeyman barber and has shaved me for years. A moment afterwards the Major died— actually before the boarders recovered from the shock of this intelligence. ~ It was discovered soon afterwards that the Major had lied. The landlord was not a barber, and never had been. A New Hero. There was one other bold boarder in the house. He used to kick the weak-eyed poodle, and the boarders idolized him. Young Jenkins, who was out of work and owed a great deal for board, told the landlady, and she stood over the bold boarder while he packed his trunk and moved away. Mr. Benny says the mistress and her husband drank too much beer at times and alarmed the house at two in the morning with cries of “ fire” and “ murder,” and the police came in and searched every room for robbers. ‘There was an imbecile servant-girl in the kitchen for a time, and the landlady asked for sympathy for her, as her young life had been blasted by the charge of poisoning a family— but she had been acquitted because her mind was so unsound that she was not responsible for her actions. ‘Ihe terrified boarders used to pour money into her lap, to keep on good terms with her. One day she was sent on an errand to Little Twelfth Street, and she got lost and never came back. Tue INeviraBLe. One morning a deputy sheriff attached for unpaid rent all the nroperty, except what the landlady made young Jenkins swear was his. In this way she saved enough to furnish a flat in the heart of the lumber district, near Eleventh Avenue. While all the boarders were eating the last meal in the house, the cook, and waiter, and chambermaid burst into the dining-room, led by the landlady. “Yell not pay us?” they shouted. “T can’t,” said the landlady. AN AVALANCHE. “Will thin,” replied the cook, “I don't moind axin’ a few questions: why do yez till all the boarders the masther kapes a restaurant ? Shure, he’s a waiter in a hotel, and the marks in the shates, and towels, and pillow-cases shows that he has wurruked in the Wistminister, and the Saint Nickles, and the Grand Cintral, and the Fift Avenoo, and many odhers. Shure, | can see be the nopkins and the towels which he brung home last night joost which hotel he has an engagemint wid at the prisint toime. What bates us gir-r-rls iz: how duz he manage to git so much pervizuns? Last night, shure, he brung home wid him wan coat-tail full of iggs, wan full of lump-sugar, a pound of butter done up in a napkin and carried in his hat, the four ov his weskit pockits, filled with coffy banes, and the bafe-stake yez were just afther aiting done up in a noozepaper and stuck under his arrums. He looked so choild-loike when he sez to me: His EXPLaNAatioN, “I'd rather carry things in me pockit than hev to lug a big basket. ‘These napkins,’ sez he, ‘I bought chape at an auction.’ Some- times he does bring the full ov his weskit wid vigitables, and the heaping of his two hands wid fancy cakes Shure, nayther he nor the madam spinds the totle of 25 cents a day on the table. Mary Ann, that was got rid of by bein’ charged wid makin’ love to the old thafe of a Frinchman, so ez she could n't git her wagiz, could till yez the totle number of spoons and forks he brung from aich hotel; but, shure, yez can count thim yourselves.” ‘THE AVALANCHE CHECKED. ‘Thus, Mr. Benny says, the cook rattled on until the landlady covertly exhibited a roll of bills, the sight of which closed the cook’s mouth; and the landlady led the expectant servants back to the kitchen. Mr. Benny and the others moved next day, and now the house is TO LET To a RESPONSIBLE PaRTY. OUR NEXT SENATOR. ‘T appears as if Roscoe Conkling was never more to shake his gaudy curl in the Senate, after this coming session. Harper's Weekly has put its foot down, according to Jay-Gree- ley's-Whitelaw Zriéune, and insists upun it that Mr. George William Curtis (erstwhile known as the author of the “ Potiphar Papers,” etc.), the very able editor of that paper, should air his eloquence in the hall so often made to re-echo at the eloquence of the curled darling of Utica. Now we protest against this. If Harpers Weekly must have a Senator, let them put their best man forward. Clearly this is Mr. T, Nast, and nof Mr. G. W. Curtis, The 40,000,000 readers (is that the amount recorded in Mr. Rowell’s Directory?) do not buy Har- per's Weekly for Mr. Curtis's sweet editorials on Civil Service theories. They desire Mr. Nast’s artistic cross-hatchings of hands, feet, and ele- phants. Mr. Nast is a power. - Let him go into the Senate— if Harper’s W. must have a Senator. How short the sessions would be! “The honorable Gentleman from New York is a moon-eyed lynx!” cries—with many more language—the Senator from Alaska. ‘Then Mr. Nast (the Senator from New York) arises to reply. Does he speak ? No. He rises, He rises, indeed. He rises on a step-ladder. + And he plays on a black-board, like Felix Regamey, and does a “lightning caricature” of the Gentleman from Alaska, That gentlerian is suddenly shown with mule’s ears, elephant’s legs, camel's feet, and his pockets filled with pickings and stealings. The Vice-President asks: ‘Shall the ques- tion now be put ?” ‘The Member from Alaska wants to say a few words. He knows he is right—but when he sees all the Senate laughing at the counterfeit presentment of himself upon the black-board, he subsides. ‘This is all done in three minutes, Senate adjourns. Again. How nobly the Congressional Record would appear. A cheap governmental photo- grapher could be placed in the Senate Gallery, and could, with his camera, take copies of Mr. Nast’s pictures, which could be reproduced by photo-plate process into the columns of the Congressional Record—and then that dreary volume might be of value, at least to little children who like to take dangerously sharp scissors and cut out funny pictures from funny books. And no American parent would punish them for mutilating the Congressional Record. Enfin, Messieurs, have we not given good reasons why the Harper's W. candidate should should be Nast and not Curtis? But, peradventure, the millions of voters in the great State of New York can find a candi- date for Senator before the Assembly whose name is written with an N nor aC. E.S. L, And the ACCURACY. ‘Tue Liverpool Mercury thus puts it before its readers: «4 Just now Rose Eytinge is the theatrical rage. She is an American lady, who plays Nancy Sykes in a dra- matic version of Dickens's novel. But few people iden- tify her as a personage once in American politics. She is, or was, the wife of General Butler, ‘the fire-eating American statesman.’ When he represented his coun- try in Egypt, it was said that Mrs. Butler did all his con- sular work, Now she has to take to the stage for a liv ing.” . Great institution, the English journal! comicbooks.com