will serve to dispel the last lingering regret at the reflection that you
will miss your appointment, and suffer thereby serious inconvenience if
not positive loss. These things are of the world--the noisy, tiresome
world you have left without.

To the English traveller, the foreign waiter in the earlier stages of his
career is a burden and a trial. When he is complete--when he really can
talk English I rejoice in him. When I object to him is when his English
is worse than my French or German, and when he will, for his own
educational purposes, insist, nevertheless, that the conversation shall
be entirely in English. I would he came to me some other time. I would
so much rather make it after dinner or, say, the next morning. I hate
giving lessons during meal times.

Besides, to a man with feeble digestion, this sort of thing can lead to
trouble. One waiter I met at an hotel in Dijon knew very little
English--about as much as a poll parrot. The moment I entered the _salle-
a-manger_ he started to his feet.

"Ah! You English!" he cried.

"Well, what about us?" I answered. It was during the period of the Boer
War. I took it he was about to denounce the English nation generally. I
was looking for something to throw at him.

"You English--you Englishman, yes," he repeated.

And then I understood he had merely intended a question. I owned up that
I was, and accused him in turn of being a Frenchman. He admitted it.
Introductions, as it were, thus over, I thought I would order dinner. I
ordered it in French. I am not bragging of my French, I never wanted to
learn French. Even as a boy, it was more the idea of others than of
myself. I learnt as little as possible. But I have learnt enough to
live in places where they can't, or won't, speak anything else. Left to
myself, I could have enjoyed a very satisfactory dinner. I was tired
with a long day's journey, and hungry. They cook well at this hotel. I
had been looking forward to my dinner for hours and hours. I had sat
down in my imagination to a _consomme bisque_, _sole au gratin_, a
_poulet saute_, and an _omelette au fromage_.

Waiterkind in the making.

It is wrong to let one's mind dwell upon carnal delights; I see that now.
At the time I was mad about it. The fool would not even listen to me. He
had got it into his garlic-sodden brain that all Englishmen live on beef,
and nothing but beef. He swept aside all my suggestions as though