"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter this side of New York."
"An American," said Percival, "never can make a good waiter or a good valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now, always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's all right enough."
"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter.
"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket having emotions of that sort!"
"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and entrée, and for the remainder of the dinner—you may credit me or not—he proffered a claret of 1875—. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage of the latter half of the century—and it was served frappé." There was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice.
"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of sugar into his own glass—"
"Avice, dear!" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some things positively must not be mentioned at table.
"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in Chicago," said Shepler.
"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and things," sighed Mr. Milbrey.
"And the self-made man will talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself."