country to earn a little money for their term bills by
serving as waiters on tables at hotels during the long summer
vacation. It was claimed, in reply to critics who expressed
the prejudices of the time in asserting that persons
voluntarily following such an occupation could not be
gentlemen, that they were entitled to praise for vindicating,
by their example, the dignity of all honest and necessary
labor. The use of this argument illustrates a common
confusion in thought on the part of my former contemporaries.
The business of waiting on tables was in no more need of