Somebodys Luggage | Page 4

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.
Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your
unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food
assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system
curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all. At length she was no
longer spared, and could have been thankfully spared much sooner.
When your brothers began to appear in succession, your mother retired,
left off her smart dressing (she had previously been a smart dresser),
and her dark ringlets (which had previously been flowing), and haunted
your father late of nights, lying in wait for him, through all weathers,
up the shabby court which led to the back door of the Royal Old
Dust-Bin (said to have been so named by George the Fourth), where
your father was Head. But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your
father took but little,--excepting from a liquid point of view. Your
mother's object in those visits was of a house- keeping character, and

you was set on to whistle your father out. Sometimes he came out, but
generally not. Come or not come, however, all that part of his existence
which was unconnected with open Waitering was kept a close secret,
and was acknowledged by your mother to be a close secret, and you
and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of you, and
would scarcely have confessed under torture that you know your father,
or that your father had any name than Dick (which wasn't his name,
though he was never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or
chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with
your father's having a damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky
cistern, at the Dust-Bin,--a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in
it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and three windows
that didn't match each other or anything else, and no daylight,--caused
your young mind to feel convinced that you must grow up to be a
Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your
brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt convinced that you
was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your career, what was your
feelings one day when your father came home to your mother in open
broad daylight,--of itself an act of Madness on the part of a
Waiter,--and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and family's bed),
with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians
being in vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day
and a night, when gleams of reason and old business fitfully
illuminated his being, "Two and two is five. And three is sixpence."
Interred in the parochial department of the neighbouring churchyard,
and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters of long standing as
could spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, one),
your bereaved form was attired in a white neckankecher, and you was
took on from motives of benevolence at The George and Gridiron,
theatrical and supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the
plates (which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly,
immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which
rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep
standing, till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing
every individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being sawdust;
your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy
heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or correctly

speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the
rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by
calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on
the back of the corner-box partition, until such time as you used the
inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be the
Waiter that you find yourself.
I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the
calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public interest
in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood.
No, we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we
ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what might be
termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own
state of