ld be
fed and clothed and given airing and wives and children, and I
subscribe yearly, I believe, for these purposes; but to come into
closer relation with waiters is bad form; they are club fittings, and
William should have kept his distress to himself or taken it away and
patched it up, like a rent in one of the chairs. His inconsiderateness
has been a pair of spectacles to me for months.

It is not correct taste to know the name of a club-waiter, so that I
must apologize for knowing William's and still more for not forgetting
it. If, again, to speak of a waiter is bad form, to speak bitterly is
the comic degree of it. But William has disappointed me sorely. There
were years when I would defer dining several minutes that he might wait
on me. His pains to reserve the window-seat for me were perfectly
satisfactory. I allowed him privileges, as to suggest dishes, and would
give him information, as that someone had startled me in the
reading-room by slamming a door. I have shown him how I cut my finger
with a piece of string. Obviously he was gratified by these attentions,
usually recommending a liqueur; and I fancy he must have understood my
sufferings, for he often looked ill himself. Probably he was rheumatic,
but I cannot say for certain, as I never thought of asking, and he had
the sense to see that the knowledge would be offensive to me.

In the smoking-room we have a waiter so independent that once, when he
brought me a yellow Chartreuse,[239-1] and I said I had ordered green,
he replied, "No, sir, you said yellow." William could never have been
guilty of such effrontery. In appearance, of course, he is mean, but I
can no more describe him than a milkmaid could draw cows. I suppose we
distinguish one waiter from another much as we pick our hat from the
rack. We could have plotted a murder safely before William. He never
presumed to have opinions of his own. When such was my mood he remained
silent, and if I announced that something diverting had happened to me
he laughed before I told him what it was. He turned the twinkle in his
eye off or on at my bidding as readily as if it was the gas. To my
"Sure to be wet to-morrow," he would reply, "Yes, sir;" and to
Trelawney's "It doesn't look like rain," two minutes afterward, he
would reply, "No, sir." It was one member who said Lightning Rod would
win the Derby[240-1] and another who said Lightning Rod had no chance,
but it was William who agreed with both. He was like