Boarding-house

1884, Henry James, "A New England Winter" in The Century Magazine 28 (4–5) (August–September 1884). The fleshpots were full, under Donald Mesh's roof, and his wife could easily believe that the poor girl would not be in a hurry to return to her boarding-house in Brooklyn.

It’s easy enough to be a beak when you’re young and athletic, and can offer the latest University smattering. The difficulty is to keep your place when you get old and stiff, and younger smatterers are pushing up behind you. Crawl into a boarding-house and you’re safe. A master’s life is frightfully tragic.

2005, Andrew Loman, "Somewhat on the Community-System": Representations of Fourierism in the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page xxiv, When Hollingsworth and Priscilla retreat to a cottage at the end of the novel, they are spurning not only reformatories and phalansteries but also boarding-houses, tenements, and hotels.

The housemaid at the boarding-house where we have stayed since we left Heathstock is a fat, sonsy, good-natured girl, perfectly ignorant and stupid, but she has not been long in the colony, and seems willing to learn.

The janitor of the College to which I went directed me to a boarding-house, where I engaged a small, third-story room, which I afterwards shared with Mr. Chaucer of Jawjah, as he called the State which he had the honor to represent.

Throughout the United States of America, the system of hôtels has taken a peculiar turn. The hôtels are built for the purpose, and usually very large; with few exceptions they are conducted as boarding-houses on the plan of charging so much per diem, everything included excepting liquor, which is obtainable in a large drinking-room called the bar.

Those who come to stay over a month or two invariably abandon the hotels and take to the boarding-houses, where they can live much more comfortably and fare better for half the expense. The charge at these houses ranges from eight to twelve francs per day, including finely-furnished chambers and the use of the parlors, pianos, etc., wine at déjeûner and dinner.

The bibliotaph buries books; not literally, but sometimes with as much effect as if he had put his books underground. There are several varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger bibliotaph is the worst; he uses his books but little himself, and allows others to use them not at all. On the other hand, a man may be a bibliotaph simply from inability to get at his books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon the face of the earth.