“Nothing, only the waiter was too honest to take a tip,” and then she fainted.
The size of the tip that a fellow is supposed to be separated from depends a good deal on the place; as a rule, the higher priced place you strike either in a hotel or restaurant (perhaps I should say a cafe), the smaller the portions and the larger the tips. You see in a real tony place where there is lots of gilt, pictures and Oriental rugs, the less they can afford to give you to eat and the more you have to pay for it; and the size of the tips you give should increase in proportion to the shrinkage of the portions you receive.
I started to go into a place in New York where the flunkeys were diked out with knee pants, silver shoe buckles and powdered wigs, and the silverware was sixteen-to-one on the tables, but when I saw the smiles on the faces of those flunkeys I backed up and got out. You see I was hungry and only had three thousand dollars in my pocket, and the Lord only knows what those powdered flunkeys would have held me up for; besides, the dinner check would have been something.
The first time I went to Atlantic City I wanted to get wise on the tipping game, so I asked a modest looking waiter what I was expected to give up for tips in a place like that. I did not have to wait long for an answer. It was on the heels of what I said so quickly I thought I must have said it myself, “Howmuchyougot?” It was a stiff game, but I stood it a week and then went straight through to Chicago. That was the time I came home on crutches, Billy, don’t you remember?
There is one thing I could never bring out straight and that is, how the average traveler will give a greasy nigger from a quarter to a half for giving him slight attention at the table, when they will let a nice, neat white girl wait on them in first-class shape and then walk off without so much as a “thank you.” That ain’t me, Billy, the girls get my money. For that matter I suppose you will say they always did. All right, old man, I have no kick coming.
Did I tell you I came near getting married while I was down in Washington, D. C.? You see it was this way, Billy: Burt Olmstead was there with his wife, and we were all stopping at the Baldy, and Mrs. Olmstead told me she had been watching the girl who takes care of the hats and coats at the entrance of the dining-room, and as near as she could figure it out the girl was pulling in in tips ten or fifteen dollars a day. That looked awful good to me, and the next time I went in to dinner I stopped to have a talk with her. I had waited until the rush was over so as to have plenty of time, and say, Billy, she wasn’t such a bad looker I found when I got my orbs on her at close range. The conversation was something like this, commencing with myself:
“Are you married?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you like to be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. That would depend some on the con man.”