I am sure they are tyrants at home—bully
their servants, pester their wives and beat
their children—who seem to take a delight
in harassing, badgering, objurgating the
waiter: setting pitfalls in the reckoning that
he may stumble, and giving him confused
orders that he may trip himself up. These
are the men who call in the landlords, and
demand the waiter's instant dismissal because
their mutton-chop has a curly tail; these are
the pleasant fellows who threaten to write to
the Times, because the cayenne pepper won't
come out of the caster. These are the
jocund companions who quarrel with the
cabmen, and menace them with ruin and the
treadmill. I never had a fracas with a cabman
in my life; and once, when the driver
of a dashing Hansom told me confidently that
the fare from the White Horse Cellar to
Kensington Turnpike would be four shillings,
I poked him in the ribs, telling him he was
a droll fellow; whereupon he, seeing the
humour of the thing, drove me cheerily to the
palace-gates for a shilling.

The association of cabmen and waiters
suggests to me a question over which I have
long pondered. What do they say of their
fares and their customers after they are
departed. Do they talk about them at all?
I think they do. A philosopher whom
I knew, found out, after much research,
a cabaret in Paris which was the special
resort of the cab-drivers after their hours
of labour. He was of the incredulous,
and thought the men with the glazed hats
and the red waistcoats would confine
themselves to discourse upon the hardness of the
times, the smallness of the fares, the badness
of the roads, the capacity of their horses, or
the dearness of oats; or, at most, that over
the alcoholic results of their pourboires they
would discuss literature, the drama, politics
or the sharemarket.  But he was agreeably
disappointed.  The conversation ran almost
entirely upon the persons they had driven
during the day.  Chip bonnets and green
mantles trimmed with fur, were commented
upon; the stout man with the five heavy
bundles tied up in silk handkerchiefs, and
which jingled as he took them out of the cab,
was reckoned up; bets were laid about the
sallow man withe the blue-black beard, whose
left wrist was bound up in linen, whose face
was covered with scratches, who hired the cab
at the top of the Rue du Temple, and was set
down at the Havre Railway-station; stopping
the vehicle five times during the journey, as
if to alight, and changing his mind each
time.  Heads were shaken gravely when a
red-nosed driver told of how, inspecting the
interior of his cab after the sallow man's
departure, he had found three cigars, of
which a finger's-breadth had scarcely been
smoked, but which were all pulled and
gnawed to pieces; and how on the window-
strap he had discovered five deep, dull,
brownish-red marks like those of fingers.
Histories were woven and strung together
from fragments of letters, and broken flowers
that had been left on the cushion, by
veiled ladies; from old men with eyes red as
with weeping; from boys who had told the
cabman to drive anywhere for three hours,
and had paid him thrice his fare; from
destinations countermanded, and orders to
drive slowly, and blinds that had been drawn
down, and check-strings broken. What but
this: love, crime, sorrow, felicity, were
eliminated from the seemingly uninteresting
proceedings of persons the driver had
scarcely seen, and who had jumped in and
out of his carriage, paid their one franc ten, or
seventy-five centimes, and gone on to their
way, never to be seen again by him in this
world.

When the spoons are to be counted, the
gratuity-halfpence reckoned, the napkins
verified, and the check-balance struck at
night; when the gas is turned down, and the
legs of the mahogany tables turned up, like
those of lazy dogs; when the tired-cook
emerges from the lower regions, and,
wiping her hot face, essays to forget
that such things as chop and 'tater
or steak well done can be; when the last
customer has vanished, and the waiters
have their suppers (I would give something
to see a waiter sup), then you may be sure
the tide of conversation turns on the
customers of the past day. Then you and I and
all the world of customers are brought before
the vehmgericht of the Saladin's Coffee-
house. Then our liberality and our meanness,
our habit of choking over our soup,
and method of brewing our punch, the
handles of our umbrellas, the cut of our
paletôts, are all weighed, and noted, and
commented upon.  Moles, and bats, and deaf
adders that we are, we imagine that yonder
man in the white neckcloth has neither eyes
to see nor ears to hear, and that he is
content to bring us our dinners and take our
twopences without further question.  Why,
he knows all about us. We sit in a box and
talk, as though we were in a padded chamber;
but there is an ear of Dionysius by
every coffee-room bell. The waiter is aware
of us. How we went into the City to-day,
and couldn't meet that party who is to cash
the little bill; how we don't mind telling
Tom, in the strictest confidence, that Jack is
an infernal scoundrel; how we are madly in
love with Emily; how we like coming to the
Saladin Coffee-house, because that ruffianly
Mopus never comes there (Mopus dines at
the Saladin every day); how the waiter has
not the slightest idea whom we are. Moles
and bats! the waiter often knows our tailors,
our washerwomen, and the exact amount of
our incomes. He knows, when a customer
tells him that he has left his purse at home,
and that he will settle that little matter
next time, how far the customer is
trustworthy. Men who pass the major portions