Promoters of Gossip
In these public caravanseries the demon of gossip is apt to get full sway. All the boarders run daily the gauntlet of general inspection—how they look when they come down in the morning and when they get in at night, and what they do for a living, and whom they receive as guests in their rooms, and what they wear, and what they do not wear, and how they eat, and what they eat, and how much they eat, and how little they eat. If a man proposes in such a place to be isolated and reticent and alone, they will begin to guess about him: Who is he? Where did he come from? How long is he going to stay? Has he paid his board? How much does he pay? Perhaps he has committed some crime and does not want it to be known; there must be something wrong about him, or he would speak.
The whole house goes into the detective business. They must find out about him. They must find out about him right away. If he leave his door unlocked by accident he will find that his rooms have been inspected, his trunk explored, his letters folded differently from the way they were folded when he put them away. Who is he? is the question, asked with intenser interest, until the subject has become a monomania. The simple fact is, that he is nobody in particular, but minds his own business. The best landlords and landladies cannot sometimes hinder their places from becoming