The family of Sjalouschine is said to bear oysters on their coat-of-arms in memory of the emancipation.
At a dinner-party where there were twelve covers, one of the courses consisted of scalloped oysters in silver shells. The set of shells was broken—there were only eleven. The mistress, therefore, told the butler that she would not eat any oysters. When the oyster course came, he placed before his mistress one of the shells. To his horror she did not decline it. She took up her fork and was about to plunge into it, when the man flew to her side. “Pardon me, madam,” he murmured, “but you said I was to remind you that the doctor forbade your eating oysters on any account.”
CHAPTER VIII
WAITERS AND SNAILS
“Will you walk a little faster?” said the Whiting to the Snail;
“There’s a lobster close behind me and he’s treading on my tail.”
Lewis Carroll
The collocation of Waiters and Snails under one chapter-heading is not entirely fortuitous. The remote connexion which may fairly be said to exist between the two is not perhaps as marked to-day as it was some time ago, for waiters are improving rapidly, and snails—well, snails are remaining very much where they used to be. The advent of the well-trained foreign waiter has done much to improve our restaurant dinner-table, and, incidentally, the temper of the average diner. Of the expert, deft, and sober British waiter there is also nothing but good to be said. The snail has no family relationship with either of these classes.
Unfortunately, however, there are others, many others, who are slow, dirty, ignorant, and only occasionally sober. It is such as these who degrade waiterdom, and to whom the snail is a fit comparison—save that the waiter is not edible. Nothing could be smarter than a good English waiter with a knowledge of foreign dishes, or a good foreign waiter with a knowledge of English; and thanks to the interest now taken in everything appertaining to dining in public places, neither is now as uncommon as he used to be.