"You need not wipe your knife to cut bread for the table, because in cutting a slice or two it will wipe itself.
"A butler must always put his finger into every bottle to feel whether it be full.
"Whet the backs of your knives until they are as sharp as the edge, that when gentlemen find them blunt on one side they may try the other.
"Cooks should scrape the bottom of pots and kettles with a silver spoon, for fear of giving them a taste of copper.
"Get three or four charwomen to attend you constantly in the kitchen, whom you pay with the broken meat, a few coals, and all the cinders.
"Never make use of a spoon in anything that you can do with your hands, for fear of wearing out your master's plate.
"In roasting and boiling use none but the large coals, and save the small ones for the fires above stairs." And so on.
If the old servants had their merits, they had also their demerits. Have they not bequeathed the latter to their successors, and carried away their merits with them into a better world?
