Women boarders are often called troublesome; but it must be remembered that all a man wants of his room is to sleep and dress in, but it is a woman's _home_; and alas! often all she has. She would not _be_ a woman did she not desire to make it tidy and habitable. This--her landlady contracts to do. The fruitless ringings for fresh-water, towels, coal, lights and a clean carpet--and she is not allowed to go down stairs after them herself--are not unknown to any woman who has worn life out in boarding-houses. It is not, as I remarked, in the nature of a woman to be comfortable in Babel; nor does its owner fancy a cloud of dust, raised in the middle of the day, upon her nicely smoothed hair, or clean collar, because the chambermaid has an appointment with John, the waiter, in the entry, or because she enjoys lolling out the front window on her elbows an hour in every room she is "righting," instead of attending promptly to her business, and getting through with it.
Now, man is by nature an unclean animal. I doubt if he would ever wash his face, were there no women about who would refuse to kiss him if he didn't. Well--_he_ clears a hole in the middle of his room, and gets ready for breakfast; which he swallows, and then bolts through the front-door, (dining down town,) not to return again till evening. What possible difference, then, does it make to him, whether his bed be made, and his room swept at ten o'clock in the morning, or four in the afternoon? _His_ home is in the restaurant, in the store, in the street, anywhere and everywhere, that temptation and inclination may lead him; four walls don't bound _his_ vision. He can afford to be philosophical about brooms and dust-pans.
But let Biddy take them into his _counting-room_. Let him stand round on one leg while she--having moved his desk and displaced his ledgers and papers, preparatory to a sweep--runs out into the street half an hour, under pretence of getting a broom, to gossip with an acquaintance. Let him, getting impatient, sit down in the midst of the hub-bub, and drawing up his inkstand, commence writing. Let Biddie re-enter, just as he gets under way, with a frisk of that wretched, long-handled duster, which tosses on more dust than she ever takes off. Let him rise again and make way for her, and then--let her bob off again--after a little water, and stay another half hour,--and all the while the merciless clock ticking on, and the perspiration standing on his forehead at this unnecessary waste of his time and temper, and the work he _hasn't_ done, and let Biddy repeat this in that counting-room, to that man, every morning in the year, (365 mornings). How long do you suppose he would stand that?