gator, or a young hippopotamus—which he is.
You can train the boy you have in chambers
to wait decently at table, because you can
throw books and clothes-brushes at him, and
stand over him with a bootjack while he lays
the cloth; but what good ever came out of a
boy in buttons, a footpage, in the waiting line?
He breaks the crockery, he ruins the table-
cloth; his fingers are in every made dish,
and in every jam-tart; and he very
frequently runs off, buttons and all, taking
with him the silver spoons and any
inconsidered trifles in the way of clothes or loose
cash that he can lay his awkward hands
upon. Do these hobbedehoys ever become
waiters ? It cannot be so. Nor do I believe
in the existence of any training-school for
these servitors. I never heard of such an
educational institution, where the tie of the
neckcloth, and the twist of the side-curl were
taught; where lessons were given in the art
of plate-carrying, beer out-pouring, or table-
laying; or where sucking waiters received
instruction in that mysterious system of
arithmetic—not, decidedly, according to
Cocker, but pursuant to the directions of
some tavern Walkingame, in whose problems
fourteen pence become one-and-fourpence,
and twenty pence one-and-tenpence.

Whence, then, do waiters come? My
theory is, that the grub or chrysalis state of
the waiter is that anomalous being known as
the " young man." The young man, mostly
with long, lank hair, and in desperately
threadbare black clothes, who is always in
want of employment; who is continually
calling on you at breakfast time, to beg you to
get him " something to do; " who is willing
to do anything; but who, on being put
through a vivâ voce examination as to his
capabilities, is generally found unable to do
anything. If you suggest copying, you find
that he has not paid much attention to his
handwriting; indeed, his calligraphy suggests
nothing half so much as the skating of an
intoxicated sweep over a sheet of ice. If
you recommend emigration, ten to one the
"young man " has already made a voyage to
Port Philip or Natal, and found it " didn't suit
him." You ask him whether he has been
brought up to any trade, and he answers
radiantly that he has served part of his time as
a music-smith, and is immediately clamorous
for employment in that line, looking quite
reproachfully upon you if you do not set him at
once to work in hammering trombones and
forging triangles. Your friends and relatives
in the country are embarrassingly addicted to
sending you young men of this description.
I remember one who brought me a letter of
introduction in which the writer modestly
threw out a hint that I might perhaps find
an opening on the press for young Noseworthy
—which was the young man's name. I have
a panacea for ridding myself of these young
men. I give them a letter to the stage-
manager of some theatre royal, with a view
to obtaining an engagement in the noble
corps of supers; and young Noseworthy
either subsides into a peaceable crusader,
peasant, Italian noble, or halberdier, or else
he is so rebuffed and browbeaten, and ordered
off, and hustled at stage-doors, and by the
janitors thereof, that his nose is quite put out
of joint, his spirit broken, and he troubles
me no more. All, however, do not enjoy the
possession of such a young man's best safety-
valve; and even I have found the experiment
fail in one or two instances; the young
man, unsuccessful as a super, having called
on me thirteen mornings running, to tell me
that he has not yet seen Mr. Buckstone.
One Phillips haunted me in this manner for
months. He knew the outside of every
theatre in London. He used to appear at my
bedside in the morning with my shaving
water. He came at last to criticise the
performances—from the playbills—and attained,
at last, such a pitch of depravity as to ask
for theatrical orders. By this, however, he
at once assumed a hostile position, sinking
from the comparatively harmless young man
into the noxious and abhorred order-hunter,
and, as my mode of dealing with that horrible
plague is very sharp and speedy, Phillips
very soon saw the last of my door-mat, and
was at liberty thenceforth to contemplate the
outside of my street-door—inside thereof, he
never passed more. The young man lodges at a
coffee-shop, and is always looking into Mr.
Ackerman's and Mr. Graves's windows.
Sometimes he is advertised for to come
forward and give testimony to an unprovoked
assault upon an elderly gentleman of which
he has been a witness. How long he remains
in this transition state I do not know; but
he suddenly casts his skin, and starts up a
full-blown butterfly of a waiter. This is, of
course, but speculation; but I think it is
true. Either he does this, or he enlists—no;
he is too weak in the legs for that—or he
becomes a mute.

Wherever and however he picks up his
education you find the waiter in the
possession of many accomplishments. He
can always read and write passably. He
knows the railway time-bill by art; he has
a prodigious memory; he balances plates and
dishes with the agility of a juggler; and if
his rhetoric be not classical, it is at least fluent
and sustained. Finally, I may observe, that
there are three classes of waiter types, each
possessing special characteristics—putty-
faced waiters, who are servile and fawning;
whiskered waiters, who are tall, solemn, and
generally rise into landlords; baldheaded
waiters who are patronisingly friendly, and
excellent judges of wine.