Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/132

 billiard-room by day. “Well, you see, sir,” was his unanswerable answer, “some of my men smoke.” Others there are who choose them men who profess teetotalism: this is to encourage hypocrisy at best, or rampant faddism at the worst. How shall a man serve the gift of the gods aright who abjures it in principle? He panders to a self-constituted crime, and he takes the edge off the flavour. And if he wears a blue ribbon on his coat and yet keeps the purple dawn upon his nose, how perilous your cellar! how subject to the gravest, because the pettiest, deceptions! Rather a butler who loves wine than one who actually or professedly dislikes it. Is it not better he should drink one bottle than give two away?

But it is part of a butler’s lot that he should do other tasks worse