a pain at
the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing,
and MORE than the right thing, the GENEROUS thing. I think it will be
difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.

O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in
the HOTEL bill does it annoy you?

Y.M. No.

O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?

Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.

O.M. The EXPENSE, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed
charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When you
came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and
maids had a fixed charge?

Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!

O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade MORE than you had been in the
habit of paying in the form of tips?

Y.M. Indeed, yes!

O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn't really compassion nor
yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the AMOUNT of the
tax that annoys you. Yet SOMETHING annoys you. What is it?

Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know WHAT to pay, the tax varies
so, all over Europe.

O.M. So you have to guess?

Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and
calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught
in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you
are only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being
worried and miserable.

O.M. And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay
unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?

Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any
of them.

O.M. It has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so
much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to
whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.

Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it
it will be hard to find.

O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?

Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a
look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake
there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and
wishing you HAD done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes you
s