CHAPTER I -- HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR
The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters,
and owning at the present time five brothers who are all Waiters, and likewise an only
sister who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a few words respecting his calling; first
having the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication of the same
unto JOSEPH, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house, London, E.C.,
than which a individual more eminently deserving of the name of man, or a more
amenable honour to his own head and heart, whether considered in the light of a Waiter
or regarded as a human being, do not exist.
In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open to confusion on many
subjects) respecting what is meant or implied by the term Waiter, the present humble
lines would wish to offer an explanation. It may not be generally known that the person
as goes out to wait is NOT a Waiter. It may not be generally known that the hand as is
called in extra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the London, or the Albion, or otherwise, is
NOT a Waiter. Such hands may be took on for Public Dinners by the bushel (and you
may know them by their breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and taking away
the bottle ere yet it is half out); but such are NOT Waiters. For you cannot lay down the
tailoring, or the shoemaking, or the brokering, or the green-grocering, or the pictorial-
periodicalling, or the second-hand wardrobe, or the small fancy businesses,--you cannot
lay down those lines of life at your will and pleasure by the half-day or evening, and take
up Waitering. You may suppose you can, but you cannot; or you may go 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
