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The meals are somewhat amusing, as you can watch all your fellow-boarders without being disturbed. They cannot talk and eat at the same time, and so philosophically devote all their energies to their dinner.

There is the girl who scrapes up acquaintances with everybody. She has had the good luck to be placed near a man, and the demure way in which she prattles and smiles at him convinces you that she is trying to make the best use of her time. Sometimes he is absent, and then the smiles give way to the gloomiest expression. Finally, on the arrival of new-comers, when there is a sort of general post all round, she is placed at the farthest extreme to her late partner, and oh! the wistful little glances she passes up the table to the gourmand who, oblivious to all but his dinner, scarcely notices her departure.

There are the three old maids, intent on capturing a husband. They have come here as a last resource. But with the usual fickleness of fortune, they seem to be more shunned by the male sex than attracted to it.

There is the newly-married couple, looking very conscious and silly, as if they were the only people in the world who had ever committed matrimony.

There is one old lady grumbling, and objecting to the back of a chicken. Poor birds, they have only two wings each, and really cannot provide everybody with them! There is another furious, because on asking for a favorite dish, that is down in the menu, is told that “it is all served!” The best things always are, unless you manage to get into the good graces of the waiter or waitress.

Young men and maidens, old men and children, all here, offering plenty of material for students of human nature!

Hotel life is very different. Even if you find the parvenu and nouveau riche as equally objectionable as the boarding-house species, at least they do not force their acquaintance upon you. The table d’hote is much more entertaining, and you are altogether more independent. Characters you come across occasionally that are most interesting to study. There are the girls who are taking the round of hotels by their mothers, in the hopes of getting them “off.” There are the men who astonish everybody by their generosity and apparent display of riches, and finally decamp without paying their bill.

A man was telling me the other day of a certain “black sheep” who had run into difficulty; how his family after a great deal of trouble managed to raise L200 between them, and sent him off to America with the money to start afresh in a new country. In a month’s time he was back again, penniless as ever, and cursing his luck and bad fortune. It was only by accident they discovered the bills of the best hotels in New York in his pocket, and found that he had been living like a prince while his L200 lasted, nor had tried at all to obtain any occupation.

With such consummate cheek, a man ought to get on in the world, I think, for after all it is self-confidence and “bluffing” that seems to succeed most. However down in the world you are, however bad your “hand,” you only have to “bluff” a little to make it all right. There are many foolish people in the world ready to be your dupes, and luckily they never think of asking to “see” you. Even the best of us try it on a little; we strive to hide our skeletons under the cloak of cheerfulness, and entirely disguise our real feelings–

“Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we;
For, such as we are made of, such we be.”