Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/145

Rh company to converse more freely without being constrained by your presence.

When you are sent on a message, deliver it in your own words, although it be to a duke or a duchess, and not in the words of your master or lady; for how can they understand what belongs to a message as well as you, who have been bred to the employment? But never deliver the answer till it is called for, and then adorn it with your own style.

When dinner is done, carry down a great heap of plates to the kitchen, and when you come to the head of the stairs, trundle them all before you: there is not a more agreeable sight or sound, especially if they be silver, beside the trouble they save you, and there they will lie ready near the kitchen door for the scullion to wash them.

If you are bringing up a joint of meat in a dish, and it falls out of your hand, before you get into the diningroom, with the meat on the ground, and the sauce spilled, take up the meat gently, wipe it with the flap of your coat, then put it again into the dish, and serve it up; and when your lady misses the sauce, tell her, it is to be sent up in a plate by itself.

When you carry up a dish of meat, dip your fingers in the sauce, or lick it with your tongue, to try whether it be good, and fit for your master's table.

You are the best judge of what acquaintance your lady ought to have, and therefore if she sends you on a message of compliment or business to a family you do not like, deliver the answer in such a manner, as may breed a quarrel between them not to be conciled: