so far as to say you
do, but you do not. Nor yet can you lay down the gentleman's-service
when stimulated by prolonged incompatibility on the part of Cooks (and
here it may be remarked that Cooking and Incompatibility will be mostly
found united), and take up Waitering. It has been ascertained that what
a gentleman will sit meek under, at home, he will not bear out of doors,
at the Slamjam or any similar establishment. Then, what is the inference
to be drawn respecting true Waitering? You must be bred to it. You must
be born to it.

Would you know how born to it, Fair Reader,--if of the adorable female
sex? Then learn from the biographical experience of one that is a Waiter
in the sixty-first year of his age.

You were conveyed,--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed
than to harbour vacancy in your inside,--you were conveyed, by
surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic
and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful
sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female
constitution. Your mother was married to your father (himself a distant
Waiter) in the profoundest secrecy; for a Waitress known to be married
would ruin the best of businesses,--it is the same as on the stage. Hence
your being smuggled into the pantry, and that--to add to the
infliction--by an unwilling grandmother. Under the combined influence of
the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you
partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting
prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your
grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your
innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates,
dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals
and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these
untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling
grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less,
then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your
food would not assimilate at all. At length she was no longer spared,
and could have been thankfully spared much sooner. When your brothers
began to appear in succession, your mother retired, left off her smart
dressing (she had previously been a smart dresser), and her dark ringlets
(which had previously been flowing), and haunted your f