please to mention. Yet you may see me, or any
other Waiter of my standing, holding on by the
back of the box and leaning over a gentleman
with his purse out and his bill before him,
discussing these points in a confidential tone of
voice, as if my happiness in life entirely
depended on 'em.

I have mentioned our little incomes. Look at
the most unreasonable point of all, and the point
on which the greatest injustice is done us!
Whether it is owing to our always carrying so
much change in our right-hand trousers-pocket,
and so many halfpence in our coat-tails, or
whether it is human nature (which I were loathe
to believe), what is meant by the everlasting
fable that Head Waiters is rich? How did that
fable get into circulation? Who first put it
about, and what are the facts to establish the
unblushing statement? Come forth, thou
slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter's
will in Doctors' Commons supporting thy
malignant hiss! Yet this is so commonly dwelt
upon––especially by the screws who give
Waiters the least––that denial is vain, and we
are obliged, for our credit's sake, to carry our
heads as if we were going into a business, when
of the two we are much more likely to go into
a union. There was formerly a screw as
frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present writer
had quitted that establishment on a question of
tea-ing his assistant staff out of his own pocket,
which screw carried the taunt to its bitterest
heighth. Never soaring above threepence, and
as often as not grovelling on the earth a penny
lower, he yet represented the present writer as
a large holder of Consols, a lender of money
on mortgage, a Capitalist. He has been
overheard to dilate to other customers on the
allegation that the present writer put out thousands
of pounds at interest, in Distilleries and
Breweries. "Well, Christopher," he would
say (having grovelled his lowest on the earth,
half a moment before), "looking out for a House
to open, eh? Can't find a business to be
disposed of, on a scale as is up to your resources,
humph?" To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood
has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the
well-known and highly-respected OLD CHARLES,
long eminent at the West Country Hotel, and by
some considered the Father of the Waitering,
found himself under the obligation to fall into
it through so many years that his own wife (for
he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity
towards himself) believed it! And what was
the consequence? When he was borne to his
grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters,
with six more for change, six more acting as
pall-bearers, all keeping step in a pouring shower
without a dry eye visible, and a concourse only
inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings
was equally ransacked high and low for
property and none was found! How could
it be found, when, beyond his last monthly
collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas, and
pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to have
been not yet disposed of, though he had
ever been through life punctual in clearing off
his collections by the month), there was no
property existing? Such, however, is the force of
this universal libel, that the widow of Old
Charles, at the present hour an inmate of the
Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters' Company, in
Blue Anchor-road (identified sitting at the door
of one of 'em, in a clean cap and a Windsor
armchair, only last Monday), expects John's hoarded
wealth to be found hourly! Nay, ere yet he
had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when
his portrait was painted in oils, life-size, by
subscription of the frequenters of the West Country,
to hang over the coffee-room chimney-piece, there
were not wanting those who contended that what
is termed the accessories of such portrait ought
to be the Bank of England out of window, and
a strong-box on the table. And but for better-
regulated minds contending for a bottle and
screw and the attitude of drawing––and carrying
their point––it would have been so handed
down to posterity.

I am now brought to the title of the present
remarks. Having, I hope without offence to
any quarter, offered such observations as I felt
it my duty to offer, in a free country which has
ever dominated the seas, on the general subject,
I will now proceed to wait on the particular
question.

At a momentuous period of my life, when I
was off, so far as concerned notice given, with a
House that shall be nameless—for the question
on which I took my departing stand was a fixed
charge for Waiters, and no House as commits
itself to that eminently Un-English act of more
than foolishness and baseness shall be advertised
by me––I repeat, at a momentuous crisis when I
was off with a House too mean for mention, and
not yet on with that to which I have ever since
had the honour of being attached in the capacity
of Head,* I was casting about what to do next.
Then it were that proposals were made to me on
behalf of my present establishment. Stipulations
were necessary on my part, emendations
were necessary on my part; in the end, ratifications
ensued on both sides, and I entered on a
new career.

* Its name and address at length, with other full
particulars, all editorially struck out.

We are a bed business, and a coffee-room
business. We are not a general dining business,
nor do we wish it. In consequence, when diners
drop in, we know what to give 'em as will keep
'em away another time. We are a Private Room
or Family business also; but Coffee Room
principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing
Materials and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves:
a place fended off up a step or two at the end of
the Coffee Room, in what I call the good old-
fashioned style. The good old-fashioned style
is, that whatever you want, down to a wafer, you
must be olely and solely dependent on the Head
Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born
Child into his hands. There is no other way in
which a business untinged with Continental Vice
can be conducted. (It were bootless to add that
if languages is required to be jabbered and