“Beastly!” said I.
The waiter calmly continued: “Beg pardon, sir, but would you mind giving me the hair? You see, the cook is so fond of her that he is quite pleased when I bring him back a stray hair or two.”
Of course, I knew that accidents will, etc.; and everything else was very good. My wife, however, wasted a good deal of time in listening in wondering amazement to the calculations made at an adjoining table.
“I don’t see how a waiter can remember such a long list of things, and tell what they all come to so rapidly; or how any two men could eat as much as those two did,” she remarked to me.
“Pshaw!” I replied, “that is nothing to Mr. Smallweed’s arithmetical powers, or to the gastronomic achievements of himself and his friends.”
“And pray what did Mr. S. do?” asked my wife.
“Why, when their little luncheon was over, and he was asked by the pretty waitress what they had had, he replied, without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Four veals and hams is 3 and 4 potatoes is 3 and 4 and one summer cabbage is 3 and 6 and 3 marrows is 4 and 6 and 6 breads is 5 and 3 Cheshires is 5 and 3 and 4 pints of half-and-half is 6 and 3 and 4 small rums is 8 and 3 and 3 Pollys is 8 and 6 and 8 and 6 in half a sovereign, Polly, and 18 pence out.’”
When we rose to leave the room, we found that some one had left before us with Mrs. Lawyer’s new umbrella. Silently I quitted the place, for I knew that it had been decided that a restaurant is not an inn, so as to charge the proprietor with the liabilities of an innkeeper toward transient persons who take their meals there; (and the same rule applies even though he does in fact keep in the same building an hotel, to which the eating-house is attached;[68]) and therefore it would be useless to expect the proprietor to make good the loss. Nor is a refreshment bar (where persons casually passing by receive the good things of this life at a counter) an inn, although it is connected with an hotel, and kept under the same license, but entered by a separate door from the street.[69] Where, however, a servant once asked permission to leave a parcel at a tavern, and the landlady refused to receive it; the man, being a thirsty soul, called for something to drink, putting the parcel on the floor behind him while imbibing, and while thus the spirit was descending more rapidly than it ever did in the most sensitive thermometer, the package disappeared, and never was seen again by the owner; yet the innkeeper was held responsible for the loss.[70]
An umbrella was bought and money expended for divers little odds and ends before we went back to the hotel for dinner. On our return, Mr. Deadhead and his wife entered the hotel just before us. They were country cousins of the proprietor’s, and had been asked to dinner, or had come without an invitation. As he was opening an inside door a large pane of glass fell out of it, and, slightly grazing his hand, shivered into a thousand pieces on the marble floor. I told him to rejoice that he had been fortunate enough to escape with the loss of but a drop or two of his vital fluid; for I remembered distinctly a similar accident happening to my father’s old friend, Southcote, in England, years ago; and although he sued the proprietor of the house, alleging that he (the landlord) was possessed of an hotel, into which he had invited S. as a visitor, and in which there was a glass door which it was necessary for him (S.) to open for the purpose of leaving, and which he, by the permission of the owner, and with his knowledge, and without any warning from him, lawfully opened, for the purpose aforesaid, as a door which was in a proper condition to be opened, yet, by and through the carelessness, negligence, and default of defendant, the door was then in an insecure and dangerous condition, and unfit to be opened; and, by reason of said door being in such insecure and dangerous condition, and of the then carelessness, negligence, default, and improper conduct of the defendant in that behalf, a large piece of glass fell from the door, and wounded Southcote—yet, although he said all this, the Court of Exchequer, with Pollock, C. B, at its head, decided that no cause of action against the proprietor was disclosed.[71] It was considered that a visitor in a house was in the same position as any other member of the establishment, so far as regards the negligence of the master or his servants, and must take his chance of accidents with the rest.[72] Baron Bramwell, however, well said that where a person is in the house of another, either on business or for any other lawful purpose, he has a right to expect that the owner will take reasonable care to protect him from injury, and will not leave trap-doors open down which he might fall, or take him into a garden among spring-guns and man-traps.[73]
At dinner—to which, in addition to the various condiments provided by mine host, we ourselves brought that best of sauces, hunger—there was seated at a neighboring table Mrs. Deadhead, a friend of the proprietor’s, as I have said, a lady of considerable amplitude of person, and extensively bedecked with the diamonds of Golconda, the gold of Australia, the lace of Lyons, the feathers of South Africa, the millinery of New York, and attired in a silk dress of most fashionable shape, color, and make. As a waiter was helping this very conspicuous member of society to a plate of soup, he caught his foot in the extensive train, stumbled, and placed the soup in her ladyship’s lap—minus the plate. Great was the commotion, loud the reproaches, abject the apologies.