Mr. Jerome K. Jerome has an amusing tirade on the subject. He says: “The slowest waiter I know is the British railway refreshment-room waiter. His very breathing, regular, harmonious, penetrating, instinct as it is with all the better attributes of a well-preserved grandfather’s clock, conveys suggestion of dignity and peace. He is a huge, impressive person. There emanates from him an atmosphere of Lotusland. The otherwise unattractive room becomes an oasis of repose amid the turmoil of a fretful world.”
Of course the waiter’s life is a trying and arduous one. There is much worry by thoughtless clients. There are disappointments, and swindlers, and rogues. Then the actual pedestrian exercise is not little. A waiter in a restaurant in Christiania one day provided himself with a pedometer before starting his work. According to his calculations he took rather under 100,000 steps, covering some thirty-seven miles, between 8 a.m. and 12.30 a.m. Working and walking four days a week, he calculated that he covered more than 7000 miles in a year.
Another danger is threatened by the waiter’s serviette. In the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift Professor Kron inaugurated a crusade against the napkin which the waiter flourishes as a sign of his profession, but which, in the Professor’s opinion, is a deplorably unhygienic piece of linen and should be summarily abolished in all civilized countries.
Dr. Kron notices how waiters carry this thing, now in their hands, now in their trousers pockets, and sometimes under their arm. They wipe table-tops with it, wipe glasses, knives, forks with it, wipe the manly perspiration from their brows and the beer froth from their lips. No civilized man should tolerate its presence, and the Professor closes his article with the war-cry, “Away with the waiter’s napkin!” The Professor, it will be noticed, refers to the “rough” waiter only, and not to the civilized kind. He also fails to suggest a substitute for the serviette.
In a book entitled “Trouble in the Balkans” Mr. J. L. C. Booth says of Athenian waiters: “Robbery among the Greeks is not a cultivated art; it is a gift. They are all born with it. There is only one known method of getting square with an Athenian waiter, and that is to dine twice at the same place, near the door. You pay the first night.”
Enough of Waiters, however; let us to a more congenial, if allied topic, the edible Snail.
It is surely quite superfluous to enter upon any defence of Snails as an article of food. If you like them, well, you like them. If you do not, then you probably detest them. No one ever just tolerated snails. There is good historical precedent, as shall be shown hereafter, for their systematic cultivation. They are most nutritious, containing, it is alleged, twice the amount of proteid possessed by the oyster. Be that as it may, they have been a desirable article of food for many centuries past.
Paris, according to the “Figaro,” consumes eight hundred thousand kilogrammes of snails annually. High though this figure is, it will probably be exceeded, for, after having been in disgrace for some time, the escargot has reconquered the favour of the gourmets.
Burgundy and the two departments of Savoy are the great sources of supply. There they are bought for 8 fr. or 9 fr. the thousand. The interesting molluscs are first sent to Auxerre, whence they are resold to Paris as coming from the vines of Macon and Dijon.
A number of intelligent speculators also practise the breeding of snails, which they place in parks enclosed in fences made of smoothly planed planks covered with tar to prevent their climbing out and escaping.