Learn English – What does “a day’s work” mean

Run of House, or ROH, generally means you will be staying in a room decided upon by the hotel. In it's simplest form, ROH means you will get whatever room is available at the time you check-in.

If the hotel has a deluxe room or a suite available, you "could" get a nicer room than you would have if you had requested a specific type of accommodation, but you could be booked into a lesser valued room. It all depends on the hotel and how the hotel handles Run of House.

Sometimes, a hotel will have a specific type of room which is their standard Run of House room, which will be booked to those that do not request a specific room type.

If you want a specific room, view, or location, go ahead and choose it unless you are choosing the most basic room the hotel offers, then you might be better off to choose ROH, and hope for something a step or more better than the basic room.

It means the landlord of the little inn was scouring his doorstep, probably with sand and water as it is described as 'sanding'.

Stone floors and stone stairs are sometimes scrubbed with sand and water, sometimes with the hearth-stone, or with pipe-clay prepared after the following receipt: Boil half a pint of size [glue] with the same quantity of whiting and pipe-clay in two quarts of water; the stones must be first washed clean with water, and this mixture afterward laid smoothly on them with a flannel; when dry, they must be rubbed with a dry cloth or flannel. Stone floored kitchens and offices, stone hearths, stone steps, and balconies are usually washed with a flannel and water, and, while wet, scrubbed with the hearth-stone. Steps at the entrances of houses are washed and whitened every day in town, in the country scarcely more than once a week; stone kitchens twice a week, balconies only once. Webster's Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy, New York 1845 and later editions