FEMININE WAITERS AT HOTELS.
“Some of our leading hotel-keepers are considering the policy of employing female waiters.”
Good news for you, poor pale-faced sempstresses! Throw your thimbles at the heads of your penurious employers; put on your neatest and plainest dress; see that your feet and fingers are immaculate, and then rush en masse for the situation, ousting every white jacket in Yankeedom. Stipulate with your employers, for leave to carry in the pocket of your French apron, a pistol loaded with cranberry sauce, to plaster up the mouth of the first coxcomb who considers it necessary to preface his request for an omelette, with “My dear.” It is my opinion that one such hint will be sufficient; if not, you can vary the order of exercises, by anointing him with a “hasty plate of soup” at dinner.
Always make a moustache wait twice as long as you do a man who wears a clean, presentable lip. Should he undertake to expedite your slippers by “a fee,” tell him that hotel bills are generally settled at the clerk’s office, except by very verdant travelers.
Should you see a woman at the table, digging down to the bottom of the salt cellar, as if the top stratum were too plebeian; or ordering ninety-nine messes (turning aside from each with affected airs of disgust,) or rolling up the whites of her eyes, declaring that she never sat down to a dinner-table before minus “finger glasses,” you may be sure that her aristocratic blood is nourished, at home, on herrings and brown bread. When a masculine comes in with a white vest, flashy neck-tie, extraordinary looking plaid trousers, several yards of gold chain festooned over his vest, and a mammoth seal ring on his little finger, you may be sure that his tailor and his laundress are both on the anxious seat; and whenever you see travelers of either sex peregrinating the country in their “best bib and tucker,” you can set them down for unmitigated “snobs,” for high-bred people can’t afford to be so extravagant!
I dare say you’ll get sick of so much pretension and humbug. Never mind; it is better than to be stitching yourselves into a consumption over six-penny shirts; you’ll have your fun out of it. This would be a horridly stupid world, if every body were sensible. I thank my stars every day, for the share of fools a kind Providence sends in my way.