THE LODGER FACE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2660, 8 March 1905, Page 85

THE LODGER FACE.

By Constance Cltde.

Frequent are the allusions to the golf countenance, the motor expression, and the bicycle features / these, however, being adornments almost peculiar to the West End. Below the bridges and towards the east of Londion, one is haunted by another pioduct of civilisation — the Lodger Face. It is generally recognisable by bright but absent eyes, a complexion frequently unwholesome, and lips constantly moving as if in a murmured incantation. If, in addition, a droning or half-musical sound is heard in passing, the listener may be convinced 1 that this is indeed a member of the one-room no-friends brigade. Such a one talks to himself, talks to his furniture, talks to his relatives in the next world or on the other side of this ; but in the social sense of the word he seldom or never talks to his fellow creatures.

The slow ossification of Man into Lodger is a process going on continually in certain large, low-priced) houses, whose front doors face stodgy 'respectability, but rirhese back view is uncompromisingly slum. Here the Lodger is mainly a person who pays by the meal, said meal being silently handed to him in a manner that gives him a humiliating resemblance to a convict, especially as, like that personage, he has for the time lost the use of his name, being generally referred- to as "The Attic" or "The Second Floor Back." If he is a student, a hack journalist, or the follower of some still more recluse occupation-, he is certain to choose this mode of living in preference to tlie cheap boarding house, probably because it is so much worse for him. Henceforth he degenerates into a being who takes his breakfast from a clothless tray on the toilet table, and holds a medical treatise to his avid eyes with one hand while the other elevates a saucepan of advertised food above the gas jet by which <he reads. Thus his simple coojjing expenses are included in the sixpense a week for lighting, instead' of costing him as much 'more by way of a spirit lamp. There are lucid intervals, of course, when the impossible weirdness of this existence causes a rush to the sociable unpleasantness of the low-class boarding house, or, more often, a premature outbreak into matrimony. In old and classic duys recalcitrant bachelors were annually scourged! into conjugal bonds by a band of terrible old women. These have found their reincarnation to-day in -the large army of London landladies.

The Lodger Face is sometimes seen in parks, more often on the benches of the ■ square near which his terraced home is | situated. The. square is his sitting room, | where he takes refuge when the "slavey" .elects to "do" his room by putting everything undter th? bed. Sometimes when the weather is wet he will betake himself, to an adjacnt (Free Library, where he doses peacefully with his head on a mass of current literature. In one such abode the Quarterly Review is noticed 1 to be much in demand for its sturdy qualities as a headrest. But it is when the Lodger is out of work that these institutions are most consoling. To him it is a revival of the old 1 sanctuary ideal. Here the fugitive fiom industrial warfare finds a brief refuge, and from the altar of the dailj advertisement column attempts to gain new ; strength wherewith to encounter his foe, \ the World. I

When the Lodger Face is female, it ' makes an impression at once more melancholy and restless than that of the male. The mouth droops farther at the corners and is less given to voiceless babbling (why, considering the sex's proverbial delight in speech?). The eyes are not bright and wanderinjr, but generally fixed) and a little hard. Woman does not take kindly to living alone. She tries it for a time, but the numeroxis gentlewomen's homes throughout the city prove how ; impossible ib is for the gently-nurtured woman to live without those little comforts which, if poor, she can obtain only through ; combination. Should the female lodger ' belong to another class, she will seek some approach to familiar domesticity in the various work girls' clubs that have grown up all over the city. Though naturally gregarious, woman as a lodger religiously ( keeps herself to herself, which iii the j eleventh commandment of the higher proletariat. To the extent that she obeys this law does her mouth turn downwards and the greyness of her life steal into face as well as hair.

Extremes meet. An Australian in England was lately puzzled to think of what this far-gazing abstracted Lodger Face could remind him, and' where in his thinlypopulated) island continent he had se.on its prototype before. At last recollection came to him. Out of th© bush, in whose awful loneliness he has -been immured for weeks or months, comes Surtdiowner Bill, with restless eye and moving lips, his swag on his back, his billycan in his hand. The first has always been to him, as to all his brethren, his Maria, but he has never talked politics to his billycan before ; and it may be quite a little while befor.3 he ceases to reprove it for its hideous radical delusions. Bill has had a wide space to call his home, and lie has paid no rent for his. vast bedroom; but over the loneliness of his existence lie and the London Lodger might vciy well slmke hands.

Advice to Mothers.— Are you broken in ycur rest by a sick child suffering with the pain of cutting teeth? Go at one© to a chemist and get a bottle of Mrs WiNSLOw'a Soothing Syrup. It will relieve the poor EtiHerer immediately. It is perfectly harmless and pleasant to taste, it produces natural, quiet sleep, by relieving the child from pain, and the little cherub awakes " as bright as a button." It soothes the child, it softens^ the gums, allays all pain, relieves wind, regulates she bowels, and is the best-known remedy for dysentery and diarrhoea, whether arising from teething or other causes. Mrs Winslow's Soothing Sym.p is sold b£ Medicine dealers ever* where*