Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/121

Rh I can recollect, run through the several branches of your office, and order my instructions accordingly.

In waiting at the sideboard, take all possible care to save your own trouble, and your master's drinking-glasses: therefore, first, since those who dine at the same table are supposed to be friends, let them all drink out of the same glass without washing, which will save you much pains, as well as the hazard of breaking them. Give no person any liquor until he has called for it thrice at least, by which means, some, out of modesty, and others, out of forgetfulness, will call the seldomer, and thus your master's liquor be saved.

If any one desires a glass of bottled ale, first shake the bottle, to see whether any thing be in it; then taste it, to see what liquor it is, that you may not be mistaken; and lastly, wipe the mouth of the bottle with the palm of your hand, to show your cleanliness.

Be more careful to have the cork in the belly of the bottle than in the mouth; and if the cork be musty, or white friars in your liquor, your master will save the more.

If an humble companion, a chaplain, a tutor, or a dependent cousin, happen to be at table, whom you find to be little regarded by the master, and the company (which nobody is readier to discover and observe than we servants) it must be the business of you and the footman, to follow the example of your betters, by treating him many degrees worse than any of the rest; and you cannot please your master better, or at least your lady. VOL. XVI.