Somebodys Luggage | Page 3

by the program that displays
the etext (as is the case, for instance, with most word processors); OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional
cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form
(or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small
Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas
Stories" edition by David Price, email [email protected]

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

CHAPTER I
--HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR

The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a
family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are
all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish
to offer a few words respecting his calling; first having the pleasure of
hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication of the same unto
JOSEPH, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house,
London, E.C., than which a individual more eminently deserving of the
name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own head and heart,
whether considered in the light of a Waiter or regarded as a human
being, do not exist.
In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open to
confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied by the
term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an
explanation. It may not be generally known that the person as goes out
to wait is NOT a Waiter. It may not be generally known that the hand
as is called in extra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the London, or the
Albion, or otherwise, is NOT a Waiter. Such hands may be took on for
Public Dinners by the bushel (and you may know them by their
breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and taking away the
bottle ere yet it is half out); but such are NOT Waiters. For you cannot
lay down the tailoring, or the shoemaking, or the brokering, or the
green-grocering, or the pictorial- periodicalling, or the second-hand
wardrobe, or the small fancy businesses,--you cannot lay down those
lines of life at your will and pleasure by the half-day or evening, and
take up Waitering. You may suppose you can, but you cannot; or you
may go so far as to say you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you lay
down the gentleman's- service when stimulated by prolonged
incompatibility on the part of Cooks (and here it may be remarked that
Cooking and Incompatibility will be mostly found united), and take up
Waitering. It has been ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek
under, at home, he will not bear out of doors, at the Slamjam or any

similar establishment. 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