hat you found in the plates (which was as it happened, and but too
often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the
glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you
dropped asleep standing, till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to
polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being
sawdust; your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding
a heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or
correctly speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the
rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by
calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the
back of the corner-box partition, until such time as you used the
inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be the
Waiter that you find yourself.

I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the
calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public interest
in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood.
No, we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we
ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what might be
termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own
state of mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of
which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself
that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one
in the day and again at nine p.m., and that the repleter you was, the
more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself
that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to take a
personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh
(say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was
given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted butter, and abandoned to
questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that,--each of 'em
going on as if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world.
Then look what you are expected to know. You are never out, but they
seem to think you regularly attend everywhere. "What's this,
Christopher, that I hear about the smashed Excursion Train? How are they
doing at the Italian Opera, Christopher?" "Christopher, what are the
real particulars of this business at the Yorkshire Bank?" Similarly a
ministry gives me more trouble t