[A worn leather guest register, green cloth at the spine, kept on a stand by the door at No. 21 Filbert St., Russian Hill, San Francisco, throughout the proprietorship of Mrs. Aileen O'Donnell (1888–1924). Ruled columns: NAME / WHENCE / ARRIVED / DEPARTED / RENT. Selected entries below. The right-hand marginalia, in pencil, are in O'Donnell's hand and were added at various times; she had a habit of going back into the book when an occasion struck her.]
Page 47.
Hume, August. Port Hume, N.Y. 28 Aug. 1895. — $14 wk.
[pencil, right margin:]
back room, the east one. he asked it himself for the morning light. liked the piano though it was out of tune. wrote his sister Sundays. paid by the month, never by the week. d. 14 April 1903 in this house, of his lung. his brother sent a cheque for the difference. I did not cash it. I have it pressed in the front of this book against the leather.
[Page 47, three entries omitted: two commercial travelers; a Mr. Aldridge of Chicago for two nights.]
Page 49.
Timmons, John. "the lakes." 29 Jan. 1913. — $14 wk.
[pencil, right margin:]
three months in advance, in cash, on the doorstep. would not name the lake. asked for the cheap back room. it is not the cheapest. I gave it to him anyway. he ate his fourth morning's breakfast as though he had not expected to be fed again.
Timmons, John. [departed] 7 May 1915.
[pencil, right margin:]
to Vallejo, he said. he did not look back at the house from the trolley. some do.
Inside back cover.
[pencil, undated, in the same hand and probably late.]
I have had two boarders in this house who came west because the place behind them did not want them living in it. The first I did not understand at the time. The second I understood at the door. They were neither of them my business and I asked neither of them anything. I gave each the east back room because the light is good in the morning and the door has a bolt that works.
I do not write down what I know about my boarders. I write down only what I keep them for, which is the rent and the address.
This book is my account, however, and not theirs; and I will note here, since I have come to be an old woman, that the second man sent his first letter from this house to a Mrs. McCausland in the Ward, Port Hume. I posted it for him. He did not put a return.
— A. O'D.