th his family in Switzerland for
nine months was met by a London acquaintance on his return, who
expressed his regret at his having been in trouble at home. 'Nay, I
have been in no trouble,' he replied, 'and, indeed, none of us have
been at home.' 'But a month ago when I was passing down your street I
surely saw a funeral standing at your door?' Nor had his eyes deceived
him. The butler in charge had let the house for a couple of months, and
but for his singular ill-luck in one of his tenants happening to die
during their temporary occupation of it, he would have pocketed the
rent (_minus_ the money requisite to keep the maids' mouths shut) and
his master would have been none the wiser. It is said that it is only
when we have lost a friend that we come to value him at his true worth;
and it is certain that it is only when one's butler has left us and the
tongues of his fellow-servants are loosened that we come to learn his
demerits--the difference between his real character and his written
one. If he is a rogue, his evil influence remains behind him, and, next
to the maidservants, it is the page who suffers most from it. He
becomes--poor little fellow!--almost by necessity an accessory to his
delinquencies, plays pilot-fish to the other's shark, and himself grows
up to swell the host of bad servants and that army of martyrs their
masters and mistresses.

A common cause of a butler's ruin, and for which he is much to be
pitied, is his having married unfortunately. I had once a good servant
whom I was very loth to lose, but whose departure became necessary from
his constantly being visited by a wife in advanced stages of
intoxication. Housewives generally prefer a married man for their
servant, for reasons that are not inscrutable. I do not wish to differ
from such good authorities. But though I have no objection to my butler
being married, I do object to maintain his wife, which, if he be on
good terms with the cook, there is a strong probability of my having to
do. As to his own eating, Heaven forbid that I should grudge it to him;
but it is curious and utterly subversive of all medical dogma that both
men-servants and maidservants, who take, of course, comparatively
little exercise, should, nevertheless, contrive to eat more apiece for
dinner than two average Alpine climbers. Four meals a day, and three of
them meat meals, is their usual rate of sustenance, and the food must
not only be frequent and plentiful, but very