Page:The Overland Monthly volume 1 issue 2.djvu/32

 ate reproof, "Engaged, sir." The old gentleman in the gold spectacles and displaying a very well-developed double chin, sitting in the corner, raises his eyes in an enquiring manner. It is painfully evident that he regards me as an interloper against whose possible machinations it would be only the part of wisdom at once to secure his pocket handkerchief. Somewhat bewildered, I cast my eyes around to discover another place. A vacant table appears in the distance. I make for it with desperate energy, but am again repulsed with great loss by the words "Engaged, sir." All eyes are now upon me. Forks and alas, sometimes knives, are stayed in their passage to the open mouths. I feel that there is only one method of extricating myself from this embarrassment. I quietly slip a greenback into the hand of the unconcerned African by my side, who is at once converted into the most obsequious of servitors, and I am conducted in triumph to the very best seat in the whole dining-room, and left there to contemplate the rather tawdry beauties of the dinner-service. After the lapse of a half-hour, or thereabouts, the bright idea forced itself upon the mind of some one of the attendants that I required something to eat, and that it was for that purpose I had taken a seat. He bends over me with an air of the most anxious solicitude to get my order. The soup is promptly brought, and probably also the fish, but then a forgetfulness begins to steal over his faculties as unaccountable as it is marked. The moment I turn my eyes in the direction of that eccentric waiter, he immediately starts behind the screen which covers the way to the kitchen in hot pursuit of some dainty for another person. What could have produced so sudden and unaccountable change of manner is not at first very apparent. I hope I know enough not to address in this progressive age a functionary clothed with so much power for good or evil, with the opprobious title of "waiter." In all my communications with him I took care to preface my remarks with "steward," but it was of no use—I have to resort to the old system. The touch of the coveted legal tender restores my capricious servitor to his original good humor. It is now demonstrated for the first time that there are hot plates in his resources, vegetables that had been boiled less than a week ago, and tit-bits most luscious and agreeable.

Of all complicity in these nefarious proceedings I acquit, of course, the warm-hearted philanthropist who had received me with so much geniality at the office. It would be impossible for any hotel-keeper to maintain a strict watch upon every movement of all his employés. The case is to some extent as intractable as that of the hackman. It is not only beyond, but it defies, progress. These little exactions, coupled with that of the absent-minded porter who follows you all over the halls when you descend in the morning, beating the reveille with admirable dexterity upon the back of your coat, and refuses to abandon the firm resolve not to leave a bit of nap on it, unless, after the peculiar tactics of the organ-grinder, he is bought off with a handsome gratuity, cannot after all add a great deal to that sure bargain for a stipulated sum per day for the run of the establishment. And so the victim lets the days roll by, happily unconscious of the fate in store for him. In my case, when the day arrives for my departure, being a nervous individual and for many years the fierce calumniator of people that are constitutionally late, I give timely notice of the fact at the office, so that the bill may be made out in season. I may know myself exactly what the sum total was to a cent—so many days, at four dollars and fifty cents, amount to so much. There could be no mistake about that. But to arrive at that quotient, the "gentlemanly clerk" has to