But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father took but little, excepting from a liquid point of view. Your
mother’s object in those visits was of a house-keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your father out.
Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come, however, all that part of his existence which
was unconnected with open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your mother to be a
close secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of you, and would scarcely
have confessed under torture that you know your father, or that your father had any name than Dick (which
wasn’t his name, though he was never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or child.
Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your father’s having a damp compartment, to himself,
behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust Bin, a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a platerack, and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn’t match each other or anything else, and no daylight,
caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced
of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt convinced that you was born to the
Waitering.
At this stage of your career, what was your feelings one day when your father came home to your mother in
open broad daylight, of itself an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter, and took to his bed (leastwise, your
mother and family’s bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your
father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason and old business fitfully
illuminated his being, “Two and two is five. And three is sixpence.” Interred in the parochial department of the
neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters of long standing as could spare
the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form was attired in a white
neckankecher [sic], and you was took on from motives of benevolence at The George and Gridiron, theatrical
and supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates (which was as it happened, and but too
often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which rarely went beyond
driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing, till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to
polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being sawdust; your counterpane being ashes
of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neck ankecher (or correctly
speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the
name of Bishops, and by calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the back of the
corner-box partition, until such time as you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood,
and to be the Waiter that you find yourself.
I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the calling so long the calling of myself and family,
and the public interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood. No, we are not.
Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what
might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of mind be, if you was one
of an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself
that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine p.m., and
that the repleter [sic] you was, the more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was
your business, when your digestion was well on, to take a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred
gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up to
grease and fat and gravy and melted butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of
that, each of ’em going on as if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world.
What is being inferred by “your father took but little, excepting from a liquid point of view” At the starting of 1st
paragraph?
Full Access to 1265 Questions