Jack Henderson on tipping

by Benj. F. Cobb

Dear Billy:—

Writing on train is not the best of a task, but when I feel like writing I must write or you would get no letters. I have just been in to dinner in the dining-car, and there I met a tan colored coon who used to wait on us up to the Poker Club on Clark Street. That coon ought to be rich with the tips he has pinched out of us; most likely he would be if he had not played so much policy.

You ought to have seen him swell up when he saw me; he acted as though he was carrying the secret of my birth, or something else equally as interesting. He started to shake hands with me, but when he saw that three-karat uneasy payment diamond I am wearing in my shirt front, he backed up and got away. He came back as soon as he could get his breath and I had the best there was in the car and a very large portion of it. Of course, he expected a half for what he stole from the company, and of course he got it, but it made me feel as though I had laid myself liable to arrest as an accessory before the fact in a larceny case.

Running across this nigger and noticing how easy he pried a half out of me, made me hark back to other things that have happened and then I got doubtful as to my former decision as to tipping being the right thing to do. After all it is not so much a question of right and wrong as it is a case of can a fellow afford not to do it?

I remember going into a Broadway hotel in New York once and deciding beforehand that I would do no tipping. The first time I went into the dining-room the head coon bowed me in very graciously, as he had never seen me before, and I most likely looked easy; he gave me in charge of a dull-looking waiter and let it go at that. The waiter was bum, to put it mildly, and as I made up my mind that I did not owe him anything, he did not get anything.

The next time I went into that dining-room I was given a different table and a different waiter. This waiter was a little better than the other one and seemed to try hard to do everything to please me, but I had steeled my heart against all waiters and I was not in a mind to show the white feather or the soft heart, whichever it might be called.

The next time I came into the dining-room I received very slight notice from the “King of the Cannibal Islands,” as I had designated the big moke at the door, and I was turned over to the tender mercy of a six-foot coon who had a hand like a ham and teeth that reminded me of a mile of painted fence palings. This black slugger did not waste any time on me. He demanded my order as though he meant my watch and diamond pin, and when he came back with the stuff, he threw it at me as though he was pitching quoits at an iron pin. He only gave me a half portion of butter, and then kept out of my way so I could not get any more.

I called to another waiter, but the only satisfaction I got was:

“I am not waiting on you.”

When I asked him to call my waiter, I was passed by as though he had not heard me. I called the assistant head waiter, only to be told that the waiters were very busy, and were doing the best they could.