Boarder’s Soliloquy
(A Parody)
To board or not to board? That is the question,
Whether ’tis nobler for mind and stomach
To suffer pains of outrageous hunger
Or get thee to a hasherie in the city,
And there to masticate tough meat and pie crust,
To eat, to consume stale eggs, to say we end
The stomach ache and thousand shocks
That flesh is heir to in a boarding house.
To eat, to sleep; perchance to dream; aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep what nightmare dreams may come;
When we have conquered our dyspepsia
And sought repose upon our bed of corncobs
That makes a burden of our righteous life.
Who could bear this tantor without demur?
The oppressing wrong of the boarding-house mistress,
The pangs of a dyspeptic stomach,
The insolence of the landlady’s daughter,
The stale jokes of her fat husband,
The squalls of her sister’s baby,
The whistling of her ten-year-old son,
The vocalization of the lady in the next room,
The violent piano exercise of the widow boarder,
When we might seek another place? aye, there’s the respect,
Why leave this bedlam, to which no boarder e’er returns?
Puzzles the will and makes us rather bear these ills we have,
Than fly to those we know not of.
Thus hunger makes cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And gallantry that strikes us for the moment
Is shattered, and in this respect
We lose the name of action.