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 influence of
the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you
partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting
prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your
grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your
innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates,
dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals
and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes.
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