“You see, sir, it’s like this: There’s a tradition—what you might call a standard—among the best servants, and it’s ’anded down from one to the other. When I joined I was a third,
and my chief and the butler were both old men who had been trained by the best. I took after them just as they took after those that went before them. It goes back away further than you can tell.”
“I can understand that.”
“But what perhaps you don’t so well understand, sir, is the spirit that’s lying behind it. There’s a man’s own private self-respect to which you allude, sir, in this ’ere article. That’s his own. But he can’t keep it, so far as I can see, unless he returns good service for the good money that he takes.”
“Well, he can do that without—without—crawling.”
The footman’s florid face paled a little at the word. Apparently he was not quite the automatic machine that he appeared.
“By your leave, sir, we’ll come to that later,” said he. “But I want you to understand what we are trying to do even when you don’t approve of our way of doing it. We are trying to make life smooth and easy for our master and for our master’s guests. We do it in the way that’s been ’anded down to us as the best way. If our master could suggest any better way, then it would be our place either to leave his service if we disapproved it, or else to try and do it as he wanted. It would hurt the self-respect of any good servant to take a man’s
money and not give him the very best he can in return for it.”
“Well,” said the American, “it’s not quite as we see it in America.”
“That’s right, sir. I was over there last year with Sir Henry—in New York, sir, and I saw something of the men-servants and their ways. They were paid for service, sir, and they did not give what they were paid for. You talk about self-respect, sir, in this article. Well now, my self-respect wouldn’t let me treat a master as I’ve seen them do over there.”