A Slave of the Ring.

[11]Troloff—the Russian public executioner. Schlüsselbourg and the Cross—names of central prisons where the prisoners, placed in small cells, are always chained. Deprived of books or tools, not allowed to see their friends, forbidden to write or receive letters, those subject to the treatment, after a few months, become mad and die.

[11]Troloff—the Russian public executioner. Schlüsselbourg and the Cross—names of central prisons where the prisoners, placed in small cells, are always chained. Deprived of books or tools, not allowed to see their friends, forbidden to write or receive letters, those subject to the treatment, after a few months, become mad and die.

A Slave of the Ring.By Alfred Berlyn.Illustrations by John Gülich.“a troubled expressionon his face.”The Rev. Thomas Todd, curate of S. Athanasius, Great Wabbleton, sat at the table in his little parlour with a local newspaper in his hand and a troubled expression on his face. There was something incongruous in the appearance of the deep frown that puckered the curate’s brows; for his countenance, in its normal aspect, was chubby and plump and bland, and his little grey eyes were wont to shine with a benign and even a humorous twinkle. He was not remarkably young, as curates go; but he was quite young enough to be a subject of absorbing interest to the lady members of the S. Athanasius congregation, and to find himself the frequent recipient of those marks of feminine attention which are the recognised perquisites of the junior assistant clergy.Two or three times, the curate raised the paper from the table and re-read the passage that was evidently troubling him; and each time he did so the puckers deepened, and his expression became more and more careworn. It would have been difficult enough for a stranger to find any clue to the cause of his agitation in the portion of theWabbleton Post and Grubley Advertiserwhich the clergyman held before him; and the wonder would certainly have been increased by the discovery that the passage to which the reverend gentleman’s attention was directed was nothing else than the following innocent little paragraph of news:—“Grubley.—We are asked to state that Benotti’s Original Circus, one of the oldest established and most complete in the kingdom, will give two performances daily at Bounders Green during the whole of next week.”There seemed little enough in such an announcement to bring disquiet to the curate’s mind. Possibly, he cherished a conscientious objection to circuses, and remembered that, as Grubley and Great Wabbleton were only three miles apart, a section of the S. Athanasius flock might be allured next week by the meretricious attraction at Bounders Green. Yet even such solicitude for the welfare of the flock of which he was the assistant shepherd seemed scarcely to account either for his obvious distress, or for the fragments of soliloquy that escaped him at every fresh study of the paper.“Here, of all places in the world—absolute ruin—no, not on any account!”At length, throwing down thePost, the curate seized his hat, started at a rapid pace for the Vicarage, and was soon seatedtête-à-têtewith his superior, an amiable old gentleman with a portly presence and an abiding faith in his assistant’s ability to do the whole work of the parish unaided.“Vicar, do you think you can spare me for the next week or so? The fact is, I am feeling the want of a change badly, and should be glad of a few days to run down to my people in Devonshire.”“My dear Todd, how unfortunate! I have just made arrangements to be away myself next week—and—and the week following. I am going up to London to stay with my old friend Canon Crozier. I was just coming to tell you so when you called. If you don’t mind waiting till I return, I’ve no doubt we can manage to spare you for a day or two. Sorry you’re not feeling well. By-the-bye, has that tiresome woman Mrs. Dunderton been worrying you? She came here yesterday about those candles, and threatened to write to the Bishop and denounce us as Popish conspirators. Couldn’t you go and talk to her, and see if you can bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind?”The talk drifted to church and parish matters, and, as soon as he decently could, the curate took his leave, looking very much more depressed and anxious than ever. As he raised the latch of the Vicarage gate, a voice, whose sound he knew only too well, called to him by name; and, turning, he beheld Miss Caroline Cope, the Vicar’s daughter, pursuing him skittishly down the garden path. Miss Caroline was not young, neither was she amiable, and her appearance was quite remarkably unattractive.All this would have mattered little to the curate, but for the fact that she had lately shown for him a marked partiality that had inspired him with considerable uneasiness. At this moment, when his mind was troubled with other matters, her unwelcome appearance aroused in his breast a feeling of extreme irritation.“don’t run away from me.”“Don’t run away from me, you naughty, unfeeling man,” she began, with an elephantine attempt at archness. “I was going to ask you to take me down to the schoolrooms, but I shall have to go alone if you fly away from me like this.”Mr. Todd, fervently wishing that flying were just then among his accomplishments, felt that now, while he was in the humour,was the time to free himself, finally if possible, from these embarrassing attentions.“I am sorry I cannot give myself the pleasure of accompanying you, Miss Cope. I have several sick persons and others to call upon in different parts of the parish, and my duties will fully occupy the whole of my morning. I’m afraid I don’t happen to be going in the direction of the schools, so I must say ‘good morning’ here.”And the curate raised his hat and passed on, fortifying himself with the reflection that what might in an ordinary case have been rudeness was in this instance the merest and most necessary self-defence.“a viperous lookin her face.”Miss Cope stood looking after his retreating figure with a viperous look in her face, and with a feeling of intense rage, which she promised herself to translate into action at the very earliest opportunity.Early in the following week, the Vicar started for London, and his curate was left in sole charge of the parish. That there was something amiss with Mr. Todd was evident to all who came in contact with him, both before and after the Vicar’s departure. His former geniality seemed to have quite deserted him, and he looked worried, anxious, and ill. The ladies of S. Athanasius were greatly concerned at the change, and speculated wildly as to its cause. There was one among them, however, who made no comment upon the subject, and appeared, in fact, to ignore the curate’s existence altogether. Whatever might be the source of that gentleman’s troubles, he had, at any rate, freed himself from the unwelcome advances of Miss Caroline Cope.The third morning after the Vicar’s departure, his assistant was sent for to visit a sick parishioner who lived just outside Great Wabbleton, on the high road to Grubley. The summons was an imperative one; but he obeyed it with a curious and unwonted reluctance. As he reached the outskirts of the town and struck into the Grubley road, his distastefor his errand seemed to increase, and he looked uneasily from side to side with a strange, furtive glance, in singular contrast to his usual steady gaze and cheerful smile. He reached his destination, however, without adventure, and remained for some time at the invalid’s bedside. His return journey was destined to be more eventful. He had not proceeded far on his way back to Great Wabbleton, when a showily-dressed woman, who was passing him on the road, stopped short and regarded him with a prolonged and half-puzzled stare that ended in a sudden cry of amazed recognition. “Well—I’m blest—it’s Tommy!”“it’s tommy!”She was a buxom, and by no means unattractive, person of about five-and-thirty, with an irresistibly “horsey” suggestion about her appearance and gait. As the curate’s eye met hers, he turned deadly pale, and his knees trembled beneath him. That which he had dreaded for days and nights had come to pass.“Well, I’m blest!” said the lady again, “who’d have thought of meeting you here after all these years—and in this make-up, too! But I should have known you among a thousand, all the same. Why, Tommy, you don’t mean to say they’ve gone and made a parson of you?”The curate was desperate. His first impulse was to deny all knowledge of the woman who stood gazing into his face with a comical expression of mingled amusement and surprise. But her next words showed him the hopelessness of such a course.“You’re not going to say you don’t know me, Tommy, though itisnigh twenty yearssince we were in the ring together, and you’ve got into a black coat and a dog-collar. Fancy them making a parson of you; Lord, who’d have thought it! Well, I’ve had a leg-up, too, since then. I’m Madame Benotti now. The old lady died, and he made me missus of himself and the show. He often talks about you, and wouldn’t he stare, just, to see you in this rig-out!”By the time, the Rev. Thomas Todd had recovered himself sufficiently to speak, and had decided that a bold course was the safest.“I’m really glad to see you again,” he said, with a shuddering thought of the fate of Ananias; “it reminds me so of the old times. But, you see, things are changed with me. You remember the old gentleman who adopted me, and took me away from the circus? Well, he sent me to school and college, and then set his heart on my becoming, as you say, a parson. I haven’t forgotten the old days, but—but you see, if the people round here knew about my having been——”“Lor’ bless you, Tommy,” broke in the good-naturedéquestrienne, “you don’t think I’d be so mean as to go and queer an old pal’s pitch; you’ve nothing to fear from me; don’t be afraid, there’s nobody coming”—for the curate was looking distractedly round. “Well, I’m mighty glad to have seen you again, even in this get-up, but I won’t stop and talk to you any longer, or one of your flock might come round the corner, and then—O my! wouldn’t there be a rumpus? Ha, ha, ha!”She laughed loudly, and the clergyman looked round again in an agony.“Now, Tommy, good-bye to you, and good luck. But look here, before you go, just for the sake of the old times, when you were ‘little Sandy,’ and I used to do the bare-backed business, you’ll give us a kiss, won’t you, old man?”And before the unhappy curate could prevent her, Madame Benotti had flung her muscular arms round his neck, and imprinted two sounding kisses on his cheeks.At that fatal moment, a female figure came round the bend of the road, and, to his indescribable horror, the curate recognised the dread form of the Vicar’s daughter. She had seen all—of that there could be no doubt, but she came on, passed them, and continued on her way to Grubley without the smallest sign of recognition.“My goodness, Tommy, I hope that old cat wasn’t one of yourflock,” remarked Madame Benotti, with real concern, as soon as she had passed. “You look as scared as if you had seen a ghost; I hope I haven’t——”But the curate waited to hear no more. With a hurried “Good-bye” he tore himself away, and made his way back to his apartments in a state bordering on desperation.“flung her muscular arms round his neck.”Locking himself in, he paced the room for some time, groaning aloud in a perfect frenzy of misery and apprehension. Then he flung himself into his chair, buried his face in his hands, and tried to think what was best to be done. After painful and intense thought, he decided that there was nothing for it but to tell Miss Cope the whole story, and appeal to her honour to keep it to herself. But how if she chose to revenge herself upon him by refusing to believe the story, or by declining to keep it secret? He could not conceal from himself that either of these results was more than possible. In that case, there remained only one resource; and it was of so terrible a nature that the curate positively shuddered at its contemplation. But it might even come to that; and better eventhat, he told himself, than the exposure, the ridicule, and the professional ruin that must otherwise befall him.Hour after hour passed, and he was still nerving himself for the coming interview, when a tap came at the door, and a note, left byhand, was brought in to him. He glanced at the address, and tore open the envelope with trembling hand. It contained these few words, without any sort of preliminary:—“I think it right to give you warning that I shall take the earliest opportunity of making known your disgraceful conduct witnessed by me in the public streets this morning.“Caroline Cope.”The Rev. Thomas Todd placed the letter in his pocket with an air of desperate resolve, and started forth for the Vicarage without another moment’s delay. It was now or never—if he hesitated, even for an hour, he might be irretrievably lost.“miss cope was engaged.”The first answer brought to him by the servant who opened the Vicarage door was not encouraging. “Miss Cope was engaged, and could not see Mr. Todd.” But the curate dared not allow himself to be put off so easily. “Tell Miss Cope Imustsee her on business of the most serious importance,” he said; and the message was duly carried to the Vicar’s daughter. That lady, after a moment’s hesitation, felt herself unable any longer to resist enjoying a foretaste of her coming triumph, and ordered Mr. Todd to be admitted.The interview that followed confirmed the curate’s worst fears. He told Miss Cope the whole story, and she flatly refused to believe a word of it. He begged her to go herself to the circus proprietor and his wife for proof of its truth, and she simply laughed in his face. He appealed to her honour to keep the story secret, and she coldly reminded him of the duty that devolved upon her, in her father’s absence, of protecting the morals of his congregation.Then at last, beaten and baffled at all points, the unhappy curate played his final card. He offered the Vicar’s daughter the best possible evidence of his sincerity by asking her to become his wife. The effect was magical. It was the first chance of a husband that had ever come to Caroline in her thirty-nine years of life, and she had an inward conviction that it would be the last. The secret she had just learnt was known to no one in the parishbut herself, and so, after a brief pretence of further parley to save appearances, she jumped at the offer, and the curate left the Vicarage an engaged man. His last desperate throw had succeeded. He had saved his position and his reputation; but at what a cost he dared not even think.“something very seriously wrong.”Within the next day or two, it became evident to all whom he met that there was something very seriously wrong with the Rev. Thomas Todd. His manner became first morose and abstracted, and then wild and eccentric. He was seen very little in the town, and when he did appear, his haggard face, his strange, absent air, and the unmistakable evidences of the profound depression that possessed him, were the objects of general remark. Some of the more charitable expressed a confident opinion that the curate had committed a crime; others decided, with more penetration, that he was going mad. From Miss Cope he kept carefully aloof. It had been arranged at that fatal interview that their engagement should be kept secret until the return of the Vicar, whose sanction must be obtained before the affair could be made public. Miss Cope was aware that the curate had two sermons to prepare in addition to his parish duties—for he would have to preach twice on Sunday owing to her father’s absence; so she did not allow his non-appearance at the Vicarage on Friday or Saturday to greatly surprise her.If she could have seen the way in which the preparation of those sermons was proceeding, she might have found more cause for anxiety. Shut up in his room with some sheets of blank paper before him, the curate sat for hours together, staring vacantly at the wall before him, and occasionally giving vent to a loud, strange laugh. The evening of Saturday passed into night, andstill he sat on, looking before him into the darkness with the same vacant stare, and uttering from time to time the same wild, hoarse chuckle.“the rev. thomas todd wasstanding on his head.”The light of Sunday morning, streaming into the room, fell upon a weird, dishevelled figure, that still stared fixedly at the wall, and every now and then muttered strange and wholly unclerical words and phrases. Still the hours wore on, until the sun rose high in the heavens, and the bells began to ring for church. Then came a knock at the curate’s door. His landlady, surprised by his neglect of the breakfast hour, had been positively alarmed when he showed no sign of heeding the approach of church time. The knock was repeated; and then the clergyman sprang to his feet and unlocked the door.“Wait a moment,” he cried, with a wild laugh. “Nowcome in!”The landlady put her head in at the door, and uttered a shriek of horror and amazement. The Rev. Thomas Todd was standing on his head in the middle of the hearthrug.“God bless us and save us—the poor gentleman’s gone clean out of his wits!”The curate’s only reply was a shrill whoop, followed by an agile leap into an upright position, and a wild grab at the terrified lady, whose thirteen stone of solid matronhood he whirled round his head and tossed across the room as if it had been afeather-weight. Then, hatless and unkempt, he tore down stairs into the street, and started at a furious pace in the direction of S. Athanasius.It was three minutes to eleven, and the last stroke of the clanky church-bell had just died away in a series of unmusical vibrations. The townspeople, in all the added importance of Sunday clothes, gathered in an ever-thickening knot about the gates, greeting one another before they passed on into the church. At that moment, there floated towards them on the breeze a sudden, sharp shout that rooted them to the spot in positive consternation.“scattered them right and left.”“Houp-la! Houp-la! Hey! Hey!! Hey!!!” And in another instant the unfortunate curate, tearing down the road, had flung himself among them and scattered them right and left by a series of vigorous and splendidly-executed somersaults. With a well-directed leap, and a wild cry of “Here we are again!” he vaulted lightly over the church gate, and began to run up the path towards the door, until, at last, the horrified onlookers awoke to the realities of thesituation and half-a-dozen sturdy townsmen rushed upon and seized the unhappy man. Then a woman’s piercing scream was heard, and the Vicar’s daughter, who had just arrived on the scene, fell fainting to the ground.There was no service at S. Athanasius that morning, and the Rev. Thomas Todd was later on conveyed, still shouting fragments of circus dialogue, to the County Lunatic Asylum. The curate’s mind had temporarily given way beneath the strain of the position in which he had found himself placed, and of the horrible future that lay before him, and his insanity had taken the form of an imaginary return to the scenes of his early life. When, some two years later, he was discharged cured, he attached himself to a mission about to start for the South African Coast, and left England without re-visiting Great Wabbleton.Long afterwards, Miss Caroline Cope, in a burst of confidence, one day related to her special friend, Miss Lavinia Murby, the doctor’s daughter, how the Rev. Thomas Todd had proposed to her a few days before his melancholy seizure.“Ah, my dear, you see he couldn’t have been right, even then,” was that lady’s sympathetic comment.“‘he couldn’t have been right, even then.’”People I Have Never Met.By Scott Rankin.ZANGWILL.“I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it—not it me. Then some day it will find out its mistake; and it will seize the hem of my coat, and beseech me to be its Rabbi. Then, and only then, shall we have true Judaism in London.“The folk who compose our picture are children of the Ghetto. If they are not the children, they are at least the grandchildren of the Ghetto.”—“Children of the Ghetto.”The Idlers ClubJoseph Hatton on the art of tipping.Almost everything has been reduced to an art. You can learn journalism outside a newspaper, playwriting by theory, French without a master. How to succeed in literature and how not; both ways have been laid down for the student. There is scarcely an art or a habit you cannot learn in books. Etiquette, how to make up, stock-jobbing, acting, gardening, and a host of intellectual pursuits, have their rules and regulations; but the mysterious and delicate art of tipping as yet remains unexploited in the social ethics of this much-taught generation. It is high time that the proper method of giving tips should be defined, its laws codified, its many possibilities of error guarded against, and some system set forth whereby the tipper may give the greatest satisfaction to the tipped at the most moderate, if not the least, outlay in current coin of the realm. The art could be illustrated with many examples from the earliest times. Pelagia’s tip to Hypatia’s father was the dancer’s cestus, which was jewelled with precious stones enough to stock the shop of a Bond Street jeweller of our own time. According to the truthful interpretation of the old English days which we find in the drama, the most popular method of tipping was to present your gold in a long, knitted purse, which you threw at the tippee’s feet or slapped into thepalm of his hand; but this system seems to have lapsed; and no fresh regulation has been established in the unwritten laws of thedouceur, which goes back even before the days when extravagant and unwilling tips were often enforced with pincers, racks, and other imperative inventions. Monte Cristo gave wonderful tips, and Monte Carlo is lavish to this day. The genius that wrecked Panama has an open hand. Promoters of London companies know how to be liberal. Not much art is required, I believe, to distribute largess of this kind. Nor are certain classes of American aldermen difficult to deal with. The art that should be made most clear is how to pay your host’s servants for your host’s hospitality; how to show your gratitude to a newspaper man without hurting hisamour propre; how to meet the requirements of the middleman of life and labour without “giving yourself away”; how to tip the parson when you are married; and, in this connection, one may remark the consolation of dying; the tippee does not trouble you at your own funeral.With reference to waiters, deans, and other public servants.The waiter at public dinners is a very considerate person. He assists you in every possible way he can. With every dish he practically jogs your memory; and, as an accompaniment to the dessert, he informs you that he “must now leave”; is there “anything else he can do for you?” If you are of a reflective nature you may, in a moment of abstraction, rise from your seat and shake hands with him; but if, as a right-minded citizen, you have constantly in view the universal claim upon your purse, you will thank your friendly and condescending attendant, and pay him for the services he has rendered to his employer. You may in your thoughtlessness and abstraction have jeopardised the success of the waiter’s arrangements for carrying off a certain bottle of wine which he had planted for convenient removal. How much you should give him is considered to depend upon the quality of the wine which you have been fully charged for with your ticket; and this question of cuisine and wine still further complicates the difficult adjustment of the rightful claims of the attendant and what is due to your own honour, not to mention your reputation as agourmet. An irreverent American, after a first experience, I conclude, of English travel, said that you are safe in tipping any Britisher below the dignity of a bishop; but a fellow-countryman, guided by this opinion, felt very unhappywhen, after being shown over a famous cathedral by the dean, he slipped half-a-sovereign into his very reverend guide’s hand, and received, in return, an intimation that the poor’s box was in the porch. I remember on one occasion, when I was investigating a question that called for special courtesy on the part of a public official, I was disturbed during my work with the question whether I might tip him, and, if so, to what extent. The subject almost “got on my nerves” before the inquiry, which lasted an hour or two, came to an end; at last I determined that it was a case for a tip. I gave him ten shillings. For a moment I thought I had offended him, and, remembering the dean and the poor box, was about to say, “Give it to a charity,” when the official plaintively inquired if I couldn’t “make it a sovereign?”He discourses concerning the ethics of tipping.Give up the idea that tipping will succumb to any agitation. So long as commodities have to be paid for in cash, and not in fine words and sweet smiles, tipping will exist. The moralist may rave against it, but ask him in what way his gratitude manifests itself when a railway porter politely relieves him of half-a-dozen bags, and deposits them in a snug corner, whilst he has barely time to take his ticket at the booking-office. It is surely impossible to abuse the same porter if, out of a feeling of recognition for favours previously received, he leaves the belated passenger to manage the best way he can under a cartload of shawls, rugs, hat and bonnet-boxes, to attend again to your comforts. You hardly sympathise with your fellow-traveller, although he may be using very strong language against the identical porter, in whose favour, for the second time, you part with a few coppers. It is the desire to secure the comforts and commodities provided by the activity of others that will perpetuate tipping. After all, this is not limited to menials. It is given, and unscrupulously accepted by all grades of society, and by all conditions of men. I have known a company director give to a titled nobody a berth promised to someone else, because he had been familiarly addressed by His Lordship in a public place, and had been “honoured” by a few minutes’ conversation. That was not, of course, a tip in the ordinary sense of the word, but it amounted, however, to the same thing. It secured a good berth to his “Excellency.” And what say you of the whiskies and waters, brandies and sodas, the champagne, oysters, luncheons, anddinners to which our good city men generously ask a would-be customer? That, I suppose, is called “paving the way to a good business.” I have not unfrequently heard people regret that they were unable to refuse a favour in return for a civility. That civility was most likely a dinner, or even something less. Kisses distributed by ladies in hotly-contested constituencies, the promise of a Government post, an invitation to a party, a mere familiar recognition, a penny, are all varieties which make the thing so general.He believes the custom will die out with human nature.Wedding presents are not given without anarrière pensée, and at Christmas our object is mostly to please the parents. Our indignation, however, is not roused by this, because we are in the habit, I suppose, of distributing and receiving such acknowledgments ourselves. We want to suppress small tips; in fact, such as are most wanted by the recipient, whose only source of revenue they constitute in many cases. We fail to realise that, were servants well paid, “tipping” would not take the form of an imposition. Employers, especially at hotels and restaurants, either give ridiculously low wages, or suppress these altogether, and in many establishments hire the tables to the waiters at so much a day or week for the privilege of serving. At present this custom has become so deeply rooted that it has given growth to a most perfect secret code of signs and marks by which each class of servants is informed how much he has to expect from the liberality of the inexperienced and unwary stranger. This applies especially to hotel servants, and has become the crying abuse against which we try to react. This code is not local, but has acquired an internationality which professors of Volapuk would be proud to claim for their language. I remember once an irascible old gentleman complaining bitterly against the incivility of the hotel servants, who never helped him with his traps. He found no exception to the rule except when his wanderings took him to some remote part of Scotland, where, he assured me, the “braying of the socialist pedants had not yet been heard.” I suspected that my friend was not over-generous, and timidly sounded him on the point. His reply confirmed my suspicion. I thereupon showed him the cause of the servants’ inattention, amounting sometimes even to rudeness—alittle chalk mark on each bag. I advised him to carefully wipe that off after leaving the hotels. The effect was mostsatisfactory—my friend has had no reason to complain since, at least when he got into a hotel. The position of hotel labels also serves to indicate if anything can be expected from the traveller. Of course, this is not countenanced by “mine host,” who dismisses the user of such messages, but as that man is generally a wide-awake and useful rogue, there is little doubt but that he is reinstated in his functions shortly after the traveller is gone. Beggars and tramps have a similar system of conveying to theirconfrèresinformation as to the likely reception they may expect from the occupants of the different residences on the road. They never fail to warn them against dogs and other disagreeable surprise or dangers, should they by some unaccountable absent-mindedness forget that there is such a thing as the eighth commandment. In conclusion,pourboire,buona mancia,backshish, tipping or bribery, was born with man, and will only die out with him.Giuseppe of the Cafe Doney, at Florence: his experience.Ah! Milor, what do I think of “teeping?” What would become of me without it? In some forty or fifty years I shall be a rich man, and perhaps keep acafémyself, thanks to the benevolence and generosity of the American and English milors. At first I was a cabman, but in Italy no one gives the cabman apourboire; so my friends said, “Ah! Giuseppe, you must make money somehow. Become a waiter, and you will grow rich.” So they took me to our padrone, and he made me a waiter, and I am growing rich on “teeps.” But it is not my own compatriots, Milor, who make me rich. When I attend one of them, he will only give me ten centimes (a penny), and if I attend two of them they will give me fifteen centimes between them. But the English and Americans will sometimes give me fifty or a hundred centimes at a time. But, alas! that happens very seldom. When I am in luck I save two hundred centimes a day (1s. 8d.), and shall, in a great many years, have acaféof my own. Perhaps Milor will assist?Grazie.The head waiter at the——   sets forth his views.Instead of complaining against tipping, the public should oblige the employers to pay their servants more liberally. In modern restaurants—and I suppose the custom has come from Paris—waiters have to pay the employers sums varying from one to four shillings a day according to the number and position of tables they serve. Their work averages from fourteen to sixteen hoursa day. It begins at eight, and sometimes long after midnight they are still at work. Out of their earnings they have to pay all breakages and washing, and, for the thirty to thirty-five shillings they earn a week, they have to put up, from a class of customers, with patience and a perpetual smile, more abuse than one in any other ten men would stand. It not unfrequently happens that a waiter would do without it rather than accept a tip which assumes the form of an insult. We look upon it as a remuneration due to us, and, after trying to satisfy the client, we do not see why he should think it an unbearable nuisance, and treat the recipient with contempt. In many cases, after exacting the most constant attention, and heaping unmerited abuse on the irresponsible waiter, the client who has most likely spent on himself enough to keep a family a whole week, grudges the sixpence he has to give the attendant, and makes him feel it by throwing the coppers down, accompanying the action by an insulting remark. Like all men whose business it is to minister to the comfort of others, many among us are very shrewd observers, and can tell at a glance what treatment we may expect from certain customers, and we behave accordingly. We are seldom mistaken in our judgment. Experience has taught us that the most generous, and at the same time most gentlemanly, “tippers” are the Israelitish Anglo-German financiers. There is a difference between them and the young spendthrift who inconsiderately throws away his money. No, sir, the Anglo-German banker, orders, goes carefully through the account, and then gives his money liberally. After him comes the Russian. The Englishman, who is next best, is closely followed by the French and German.His opinion of Americans as tippers.The American is nowhere. It is a mistaken idea to believe that he is generous. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but the majority of them come out here just to see the sights, and talk about them on their return. A certain sum is laid aside for the purpose, and I am sure they contrive to make economies upon it. The Americans are, besides, disagreeable to serve. They never lose the opportunity of making disparaging comparisons between their country and the old world. Our restaurants are country inns compared to theirs, their waiters are smarter, their services of better class, our cooking is miles behind theirs, and as toconcoction of drinks, of course we have to take a back seat. We are also very slow. A steak, in Chicago, for instance, is cooked in about the fifteenth of the time required here. When it comes to paying, the American finds that everything is also dearer over here; gives very little or nothing tothat inattentive waiter, threatens to lodge a complaint against him, and goes away satisfied that everyone is impressed by the grandeur of the Great Republic as represented by himself, one of its worthy citizens.Of Scotchmen and millionaires.In England, the Scotch are the least liberal. In Scotland, waiters and hotel servants are paid. An attempt to introduce in Edinburgh the continental system failed most ignominiously in 1886, and the enterprisingrestaurateurhad to revert to the local system, and replace all the former waiters, who ran back to London rather than be reduced to the dire necessity of going into the workhouse. Young men, as a rule, are more generous than elderly people, and the fair sex is, in general, very stingy. A gentleman accompanied by a lady, if she is only an acquaintance, is sure to tip generously,pour la galerie, although he may look as if he wanted to accompany every penny by a kick. But when the same person dines with his wife or sister, the remuneration is as small as decency can permit. When a waiter spots such a relation between a party of diners, he generally tries to escape the obligation of offering them a table. At the large restaurants we gauge the diners’ liberality very frequently at one glance, and in any case form an accurate opinion of him by the way he orders hismenu. We know whether we have to do with a gentleman or a cad, and whether his subsequent parsimoniousness is caused by cussedness or simply ignorance of the customs of such establishments, and we treat him in consequence. It is pitiful sometimes to see all the ruses employed by well-meaning people, unwilling to be thought unaccustomed to the life of a large restaurant, and my advice to such persons would be to remain natural rather than become ridiculous. The manner in which the tip is given varies according to the nationality and character of the donor. The most ostentatious among these is the South American millionaire, whose gift varies according to the number of people present. As a rule, the wealthy man is not generous.A commissionnaire can tell people’s dispositions at sight.I can say at first sight whether a person is of a kindly disposition, for I would rather assist such a person and get nothing than one who makes me feel the weight of his liberality. The amount a man may make depends a great deal on his wits. To forestall a gentleman’s wishes, give him the necessary information, and to the point; to assist him when assistance is most needed, and not before, is what is most appreciated. When in a theatre I see a couple occupying a bad seat, when better ones are vacant, I make the suggestion, and would certainly be astonished if the gentleman did not acknowledge the hint. When the working classes do not syndicate they have to accept wages so ridiculously low that they are obliged to find some means of increasing their earnings. But will it ever be possible to suppress the “evil”? Allow me to doubt it. The thing is, therefore, to prevent tipping taking the form of an imposition. This can only be done by paying good wages.Barr gives the straight tip.A native of Cuba once said to me, with an air of proud superiority, “We have the yellow feveralwaysin Havana.” I was unable to make any such boastful claim for North America, and so the Cuban rightly thought he had the advantage of me. They think nothing of the yellow fever in Havana, but when the malady is imported into Florida the people of that peninsula become panic-stricken. The yellow fever in the Southern States strikes terror. It seems to be worse in its effects when it enters the States than it is where they always have it. So it is with tipping. It is always present in Europe in a mild form, but periodically tipping swoops down upon the United States, and its effects are dreadful to contemplate. If tipping ever becomes epidemic in America, the unfortunate citizens will have to leave, and seek a cheaper country, for the haughty waiter in an American hotel scorns the humbler coins of the realm, and accepts nothing less than half a dollar. Happily, tipping has, up to date, been more or less of an exotic in America, but I have grave fears that the Chicago Exhibition, attracting as it does so many incurable tippers from Europe, will cause the disease to take firm root in the States, and entail years of suffering hereafter.Summing up.I do not agree with the member of the club who holds in one paragraph that Scotsmen are mean in the giving of tips. Speaking as a Scotsman myself, I admit that we like to go the whole distance from Liverpool Streetto Charing Cross for our penny. We desire to get the worth of our bawbee. And it is a cold day when we don’t. But it must be remembered that a Scotsman is conscientious, and he knows that tipping is an indefensible vice, so he discourages it as much as possible, being compelled by custom to fall in with it. Then, again, the man who claims that Americans are not liberal doesn’t know what he is talking about. The trouble with the American is that he does not know the exact amount to give, and that bothers him, and causes him to curse the custom in choice and varied language. Speaking now as an American, I will give a tip right here. If Conan Doyle, or George Meredith, or some author in whom Americans have confidence, would get out a book entitled, say, “The Right Tip, or Tuppence on the Shilling,” giving exactly the correct sum to pay on all occasions, Americans would buy up the whole edition and bless the author. I think Americans are altogether too lavish with their tips, and thus make it difficult for us poorer people, whom nobody tips, to get along. A friend of mine, on leaving one of the big London hotels, changed several five pound notes into half-crowns, and distributed these coins right and left all the way from his rooms to the carriage, giving one or more to every person who looked as if he would accept. He met no refusals, and departed amidst muchéclat. He thought he had done the square thing, as he expressed it, but I looked on the action as corrupting and indefensible. He deserves to have his name blazoned here as a warning, but I shall not mention it, merely contenting myself by saying that he was formerly a United States senator, was at that time Minister to Spain, and is at the present moment President of the World’s Fair.The portrait of Mrs. Henniker, which appeared inThe Idlerfor May—“Lions in their Dens”: V.The Lord Lieutenant at Dublin Castle—was from a photograph taken by Messrs.Werner and Son, of Dublin.

By Alfred Berlyn.

Illustrations by John Gülich.

“a troubled expressionon his face.”

The Rev. Thomas Todd, curate of S. Athanasius, Great Wabbleton, sat at the table in his little parlour with a local newspaper in his hand and a troubled expression on his face. There was something incongruous in the appearance of the deep frown that puckered the curate’s brows; for his countenance, in its normal aspect, was chubby and plump and bland, and his little grey eyes were wont to shine with a benign and even a humorous twinkle. He was not remarkably young, as curates go; but he was quite young enough to be a subject of absorbing interest to the lady members of the S. Athanasius congregation, and to find himself the frequent recipient of those marks of feminine attention which are the recognised perquisites of the junior assistant clergy.

Two or three times, the curate raised the paper from the table and re-read the passage that was evidently troubling him; and each time he did so the puckers deepened, and his expression became more and more careworn. It would have been difficult enough for a stranger to find any clue to the cause of his agitation in the portion of theWabbleton Post and Grubley Advertiserwhich the clergyman held before him; and the wonder would certainly have been increased by the discovery that the passage to which the reverend gentleman’s attention was directed was nothing else than the following innocent little paragraph of news:—

“Grubley.—We are asked to state that Benotti’s Original Circus, one of the oldest established and most complete in the kingdom, will give two performances daily at Bounders Green during the whole of next week.”

“Grubley.—We are asked to state that Benotti’s Original Circus, one of the oldest established and most complete in the kingdom, will give two performances daily at Bounders Green during the whole of next week.”

There seemed little enough in such an announcement to bring disquiet to the curate’s mind. Possibly, he cherished a conscientious objection to circuses, and remembered that, as Grubley and Great Wabbleton were only three miles apart, a section of the S. Athanasius flock might be allured next week by the meretricious attraction at Bounders Green. Yet even such solicitude for the welfare of the flock of which he was the assistant shepherd seemed scarcely to account either for his obvious distress, or for the fragments of soliloquy that escaped him at every fresh study of the paper.

“Here, of all places in the world—absolute ruin—no, not on any account!”

At length, throwing down thePost, the curate seized his hat, started at a rapid pace for the Vicarage, and was soon seatedtête-à-têtewith his superior, an amiable old gentleman with a portly presence and an abiding faith in his assistant’s ability to do the whole work of the parish unaided.

“Vicar, do you think you can spare me for the next week or so? The fact is, I am feeling the want of a change badly, and should be glad of a few days to run down to my people in Devonshire.”

“My dear Todd, how unfortunate! I have just made arrangements to be away myself next week—and—and the week following. I am going up to London to stay with my old friend Canon Crozier. I was just coming to tell you so when you called. If you don’t mind waiting till I return, I’ve no doubt we can manage to spare you for a day or two. Sorry you’re not feeling well. By-the-bye, has that tiresome woman Mrs. Dunderton been worrying you? She came here yesterday about those candles, and threatened to write to the Bishop and denounce us as Popish conspirators. Couldn’t you go and talk to her, and see if you can bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind?”

The talk drifted to church and parish matters, and, as soon as he decently could, the curate took his leave, looking very much more depressed and anxious than ever. As he raised the latch of the Vicarage gate, a voice, whose sound he knew only too well, called to him by name; and, turning, he beheld Miss Caroline Cope, the Vicar’s daughter, pursuing him skittishly down the garden path. Miss Caroline was not young, neither was she amiable, and her appearance was quite remarkably unattractive.All this would have mattered little to the curate, but for the fact that she had lately shown for him a marked partiality that had inspired him with considerable uneasiness. At this moment, when his mind was troubled with other matters, her unwelcome appearance aroused in his breast a feeling of extreme irritation.

“don’t run away from me.”

“Don’t run away from me, you naughty, unfeeling man,” she began, with an elephantine attempt at archness. “I was going to ask you to take me down to the schoolrooms, but I shall have to go alone if you fly away from me like this.”

Mr. Todd, fervently wishing that flying were just then among his accomplishments, felt that now, while he was in the humour,was the time to free himself, finally if possible, from these embarrassing attentions.

“I am sorry I cannot give myself the pleasure of accompanying you, Miss Cope. I have several sick persons and others to call upon in different parts of the parish, and my duties will fully occupy the whole of my morning. I’m afraid I don’t happen to be going in the direction of the schools, so I must say ‘good morning’ here.”

And the curate raised his hat and passed on, fortifying himself with the reflection that what might in an ordinary case have been rudeness was in this instance the merest and most necessary self-defence.

“a viperous lookin her face.”

Miss Cope stood looking after his retreating figure with a viperous look in her face, and with a feeling of intense rage, which she promised herself to translate into action at the very earliest opportunity.

Early in the following week, the Vicar started for London, and his curate was left in sole charge of the parish. That there was something amiss with Mr. Todd was evident to all who came in contact with him, both before and after the Vicar’s departure. His former geniality seemed to have quite deserted him, and he looked worried, anxious, and ill. The ladies of S. Athanasius were greatly concerned at the change, and speculated wildly as to its cause. There was one among them, however, who made no comment upon the subject, and appeared, in fact, to ignore the curate’s existence altogether. Whatever might be the source of that gentleman’s troubles, he had, at any rate, freed himself from the unwelcome advances of Miss Caroline Cope.

The third morning after the Vicar’s departure, his assistant was sent for to visit a sick parishioner who lived just outside Great Wabbleton, on the high road to Grubley. The summons was an imperative one; but he obeyed it with a curious and unwonted reluctance. As he reached the outskirts of the town and struck into the Grubley road, his distastefor his errand seemed to increase, and he looked uneasily from side to side with a strange, furtive glance, in singular contrast to his usual steady gaze and cheerful smile. He reached his destination, however, without adventure, and remained for some time at the invalid’s bedside. His return journey was destined to be more eventful. He had not proceeded far on his way back to Great Wabbleton, when a showily-dressed woman, who was passing him on the road, stopped short and regarded him with a prolonged and half-puzzled stare that ended in a sudden cry of amazed recognition. “Well—I’m blest—it’s Tommy!”

“it’s tommy!”

She was a buxom, and by no means unattractive, person of about five-and-thirty, with an irresistibly “horsey” suggestion about her appearance and gait. As the curate’s eye met hers, he turned deadly pale, and his knees trembled beneath him. That which he had dreaded for days and nights had come to pass.

“Well, I’m blest!” said the lady again, “who’d have thought of meeting you here after all these years—and in this make-up, too! But I should have known you among a thousand, all the same. Why, Tommy, you don’t mean to say they’ve gone and made a parson of you?”

The curate was desperate. His first impulse was to deny all knowledge of the woman who stood gazing into his face with a comical expression of mingled amusement and surprise. But her next words showed him the hopelessness of such a course.

“You’re not going to say you don’t know me, Tommy, though itisnigh twenty yearssince we were in the ring together, and you’ve got into a black coat and a dog-collar. Fancy them making a parson of you; Lord, who’d have thought it! Well, I’ve had a leg-up, too, since then. I’m Madame Benotti now. The old lady died, and he made me missus of himself and the show. He often talks about you, and wouldn’t he stare, just, to see you in this rig-out!”

By the time, the Rev. Thomas Todd had recovered himself sufficiently to speak, and had decided that a bold course was the safest.

“I’m really glad to see you again,” he said, with a shuddering thought of the fate of Ananias; “it reminds me so of the old times. But, you see, things are changed with me. You remember the old gentleman who adopted me, and took me away from the circus? Well, he sent me to school and college, and then set his heart on my becoming, as you say, a parson. I haven’t forgotten the old days, but—but you see, if the people round here knew about my having been——”

“Lor’ bless you, Tommy,” broke in the good-naturedéquestrienne, “you don’t think I’d be so mean as to go and queer an old pal’s pitch; you’ve nothing to fear from me; don’t be afraid, there’s nobody coming”—for the curate was looking distractedly round. “Well, I’m mighty glad to have seen you again, even in this get-up, but I won’t stop and talk to you any longer, or one of your flock might come round the corner, and then—O my! wouldn’t there be a rumpus? Ha, ha, ha!”

She laughed loudly, and the clergyman looked round again in an agony.

“Now, Tommy, good-bye to you, and good luck. But look here, before you go, just for the sake of the old times, when you were ‘little Sandy,’ and I used to do the bare-backed business, you’ll give us a kiss, won’t you, old man?”

And before the unhappy curate could prevent her, Madame Benotti had flung her muscular arms round his neck, and imprinted two sounding kisses on his cheeks.

At that fatal moment, a female figure came round the bend of the road, and, to his indescribable horror, the curate recognised the dread form of the Vicar’s daughter. She had seen all—of that there could be no doubt, but she came on, passed them, and continued on her way to Grubley without the smallest sign of recognition.

“My goodness, Tommy, I hope that old cat wasn’t one of yourflock,” remarked Madame Benotti, with real concern, as soon as she had passed. “You look as scared as if you had seen a ghost; I hope I haven’t——”

But the curate waited to hear no more. With a hurried “Good-bye” he tore himself away, and made his way back to his apartments in a state bordering on desperation.

“flung her muscular arms round his neck.”

Locking himself in, he paced the room for some time, groaning aloud in a perfect frenzy of misery and apprehension. Then he flung himself into his chair, buried his face in his hands, and tried to think what was best to be done. After painful and intense thought, he decided that there was nothing for it but to tell Miss Cope the whole story, and appeal to her honour to keep it to herself. But how if she chose to revenge herself upon him by refusing to believe the story, or by declining to keep it secret? He could not conceal from himself that either of these results was more than possible. In that case, there remained only one resource; and it was of so terrible a nature that the curate positively shuddered at its contemplation. But it might even come to that; and better eventhat, he told himself, than the exposure, the ridicule, and the professional ruin that must otherwise befall him.

Hour after hour passed, and he was still nerving himself for the coming interview, when a tap came at the door, and a note, left byhand, was brought in to him. He glanced at the address, and tore open the envelope with trembling hand. It contained these few words, without any sort of preliminary:—

“I think it right to give you warning that I shall take the earliest opportunity of making known your disgraceful conduct witnessed by me in the public streets this morning.“Caroline Cope.”

“I think it right to give you warning that I shall take the earliest opportunity of making known your disgraceful conduct witnessed by me in the public streets this morning.“Caroline Cope.”

The Rev. Thomas Todd placed the letter in his pocket with an air of desperate resolve, and started forth for the Vicarage without another moment’s delay. It was now or never—if he hesitated, even for an hour, he might be irretrievably lost.

“miss cope was engaged.”

The first answer brought to him by the servant who opened the Vicarage door was not encouraging. “Miss Cope was engaged, and could not see Mr. Todd.” But the curate dared not allow himself to be put off so easily. “Tell Miss Cope Imustsee her on business of the most serious importance,” he said; and the message was duly carried to the Vicar’s daughter. That lady, after a moment’s hesitation, felt herself unable any longer to resist enjoying a foretaste of her coming triumph, and ordered Mr. Todd to be admitted.

The interview that followed confirmed the curate’s worst fears. He told Miss Cope the whole story, and she flatly refused to believe a word of it. He begged her to go herself to the circus proprietor and his wife for proof of its truth, and she simply laughed in his face. He appealed to her honour to keep the story secret, and she coldly reminded him of the duty that devolved upon her, in her father’s absence, of protecting the morals of his congregation.

Then at last, beaten and baffled at all points, the unhappy curate played his final card. He offered the Vicar’s daughter the best possible evidence of his sincerity by asking her to become his wife. The effect was magical. It was the first chance of a husband that had ever come to Caroline in her thirty-nine years of life, and she had an inward conviction that it would be the last. The secret she had just learnt was known to no one in the parishbut herself, and so, after a brief pretence of further parley to save appearances, she jumped at the offer, and the curate left the Vicarage an engaged man. His last desperate throw had succeeded. He had saved his position and his reputation; but at what a cost he dared not even think.

“something very seriously wrong.”

Within the next day or two, it became evident to all whom he met that there was something very seriously wrong with the Rev. Thomas Todd. His manner became first morose and abstracted, and then wild and eccentric. He was seen very little in the town, and when he did appear, his haggard face, his strange, absent air, and the unmistakable evidences of the profound depression that possessed him, were the objects of general remark. Some of the more charitable expressed a confident opinion that the curate had committed a crime; others decided, with more penetration, that he was going mad. From Miss Cope he kept carefully aloof. It had been arranged at that fatal interview that their engagement should be kept secret until the return of the Vicar, whose sanction must be obtained before the affair could be made public. Miss Cope was aware that the curate had two sermons to prepare in addition to his parish duties—for he would have to preach twice on Sunday owing to her father’s absence; so she did not allow his non-appearance at the Vicarage on Friday or Saturday to greatly surprise her.

If she could have seen the way in which the preparation of those sermons was proceeding, she might have found more cause for anxiety. Shut up in his room with some sheets of blank paper before him, the curate sat for hours together, staring vacantly at the wall before him, and occasionally giving vent to a loud, strange laugh. The evening of Saturday passed into night, andstill he sat on, looking before him into the darkness with the same vacant stare, and uttering from time to time the same wild, hoarse chuckle.

“the rev. thomas todd wasstanding on his head.”

The light of Sunday morning, streaming into the room, fell upon a weird, dishevelled figure, that still stared fixedly at the wall, and every now and then muttered strange and wholly unclerical words and phrases. Still the hours wore on, until the sun rose high in the heavens, and the bells began to ring for church. Then came a knock at the curate’s door. His landlady, surprised by his neglect of the breakfast hour, had been positively alarmed when he showed no sign of heeding the approach of church time. The knock was repeated; and then the clergyman sprang to his feet and unlocked the door.

“Wait a moment,” he cried, with a wild laugh. “Nowcome in!”

The landlady put her head in at the door, and uttered a shriek of horror and amazement. The Rev. Thomas Todd was standing on his head in the middle of the hearthrug.

“God bless us and save us—the poor gentleman’s gone clean out of his wits!”

The curate’s only reply was a shrill whoop, followed by an agile leap into an upright position, and a wild grab at the terrified lady, whose thirteen stone of solid matronhood he whirled round his head and tossed across the room as if it had been afeather-weight. Then, hatless and unkempt, he tore down stairs into the street, and started at a furious pace in the direction of S. Athanasius.

It was three minutes to eleven, and the last stroke of the clanky church-bell had just died away in a series of unmusical vibrations. The townspeople, in all the added importance of Sunday clothes, gathered in an ever-thickening knot about the gates, greeting one another before they passed on into the church. At that moment, there floated towards them on the breeze a sudden, sharp shout that rooted them to the spot in positive consternation.

“scattered them right and left.”

“Houp-la! Houp-la! Hey! Hey!! Hey!!!” And in another instant the unfortunate curate, tearing down the road, had flung himself among them and scattered them right and left by a series of vigorous and splendidly-executed somersaults. With a well-directed leap, and a wild cry of “Here we are again!” he vaulted lightly over the church gate, and began to run up the path towards the door, until, at last, the horrified onlookers awoke to the realities of thesituation and half-a-dozen sturdy townsmen rushed upon and seized the unhappy man. Then a woman’s piercing scream was heard, and the Vicar’s daughter, who had just arrived on the scene, fell fainting to the ground.

There was no service at S. Athanasius that morning, and the Rev. Thomas Todd was later on conveyed, still shouting fragments of circus dialogue, to the County Lunatic Asylum. The curate’s mind had temporarily given way beneath the strain of the position in which he had found himself placed, and of the horrible future that lay before him, and his insanity had taken the form of an imaginary return to the scenes of his early life. When, some two years later, he was discharged cured, he attached himself to a mission about to start for the South African Coast, and left England without re-visiting Great Wabbleton.

Long afterwards, Miss Caroline Cope, in a burst of confidence, one day related to her special friend, Miss Lavinia Murby, the doctor’s daughter, how the Rev. Thomas Todd had proposed to her a few days before his melancholy seizure.

“Ah, my dear, you see he couldn’t have been right, even then,” was that lady’s sympathetic comment.

“‘he couldn’t have been right, even then.’”

By Scott Rankin.

ZANGWILL.

“I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it—not it me. Then some day it will find out its mistake; and it will seize the hem of my coat, and beseech me to be its Rabbi. Then, and only then, shall we have true Judaism in London.“The folk who compose our picture are children of the Ghetto. If they are not the children, they are at least the grandchildren of the Ghetto.”—“Children of the Ghetto.”

“I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it—not it me. Then some day it will find out its mistake; and it will seize the hem of my coat, and beseech me to be its Rabbi. Then, and only then, shall we have true Judaism in London.

“The folk who compose our picture are children of the Ghetto. If they are not the children, they are at least the grandchildren of the Ghetto.”

—“Children of the Ghetto.”

The Idlers Club

Joseph Hatton on the art of tipping.

Almost everything has been reduced to an art. You can learn journalism outside a newspaper, playwriting by theory, French without a master. How to succeed in literature and how not; both ways have been laid down for the student. There is scarcely an art or a habit you cannot learn in books. Etiquette, how to make up, stock-jobbing, acting, gardening, and a host of intellectual pursuits, have their rules and regulations; but the mysterious and delicate art of tipping as yet remains unexploited in the social ethics of this much-taught generation. It is high time that the proper method of giving tips should be defined, its laws codified, its many possibilities of error guarded against, and some system set forth whereby the tipper may give the greatest satisfaction to the tipped at the most moderate, if not the least, outlay in current coin of the realm. The art could be illustrated with many examples from the earliest times. Pelagia’s tip to Hypatia’s father was the dancer’s cestus, which was jewelled with precious stones enough to stock the shop of a Bond Street jeweller of our own time. According to the truthful interpretation of the old English days which we find in the drama, the most popular method of tipping was to present your gold in a long, knitted purse, which you threw at the tippee’s feet or slapped into thepalm of his hand; but this system seems to have lapsed; and no fresh regulation has been established in the unwritten laws of thedouceur, which goes back even before the days when extravagant and unwilling tips were often enforced with pincers, racks, and other imperative inventions. Monte Cristo gave wonderful tips, and Monte Carlo is lavish to this day. The genius that wrecked Panama has an open hand. Promoters of London companies know how to be liberal. Not much art is required, I believe, to distribute largess of this kind. Nor are certain classes of American aldermen difficult to deal with. The art that should be made most clear is how to pay your host’s servants for your host’s hospitality; how to show your gratitude to a newspaper man without hurting hisamour propre; how to meet the requirements of the middleman of life and labour without “giving yourself away”; how to tip the parson when you are married; and, in this connection, one may remark the consolation of dying; the tippee does not trouble you at your own funeral.

With reference to waiters, deans, and other public servants.

The waiter at public dinners is a very considerate person. He assists you in every possible way he can. With every dish he practically jogs your memory; and, as an accompaniment to the dessert, he informs you that he “must now leave”; is there “anything else he can do for you?” If you are of a reflective nature you may, in a moment of abstraction, rise from your seat and shake hands with him; but if, as a right-minded citizen, you have constantly in view the universal claim upon your purse, you will thank your friendly and condescending attendant, and pay him for the services he has rendered to his employer. You may in your thoughtlessness and abstraction have jeopardised the success of the waiter’s arrangements for carrying off a certain bottle of wine which he had planted for convenient removal. How much you should give him is considered to depend upon the quality of the wine which you have been fully charged for with your ticket; and this question of cuisine and wine still further complicates the difficult adjustment of the rightful claims of the attendant and what is due to your own honour, not to mention your reputation as agourmet. An irreverent American, after a first experience, I conclude, of English travel, said that you are safe in tipping any Britisher below the dignity of a bishop; but a fellow-countryman, guided by this opinion, felt very unhappywhen, after being shown over a famous cathedral by the dean, he slipped half-a-sovereign into his very reverend guide’s hand, and received, in return, an intimation that the poor’s box was in the porch. I remember on one occasion, when I was investigating a question that called for special courtesy on the part of a public official, I was disturbed during my work with the question whether I might tip him, and, if so, to what extent. The subject almost “got on my nerves” before the inquiry, which lasted an hour or two, came to an end; at last I determined that it was a case for a tip. I gave him ten shillings. For a moment I thought I had offended him, and, remembering the dean and the poor box, was about to say, “Give it to a charity,” when the official plaintively inquired if I couldn’t “make it a sovereign?”

He discourses concerning the ethics of tipping.

Give up the idea that tipping will succumb to any agitation. So long as commodities have to be paid for in cash, and not in fine words and sweet smiles, tipping will exist. The moralist may rave against it, but ask him in what way his gratitude manifests itself when a railway porter politely relieves him of half-a-dozen bags, and deposits them in a snug corner, whilst he has barely time to take his ticket at the booking-office. It is surely impossible to abuse the same porter if, out of a feeling of recognition for favours previously received, he leaves the belated passenger to manage the best way he can under a cartload of shawls, rugs, hat and bonnet-boxes, to attend again to your comforts. You hardly sympathise with your fellow-traveller, although he may be using very strong language against the identical porter, in whose favour, for the second time, you part with a few coppers. It is the desire to secure the comforts and commodities provided by the activity of others that will perpetuate tipping. After all, this is not limited to menials. It is given, and unscrupulously accepted by all grades of society, and by all conditions of men. I have known a company director give to a titled nobody a berth promised to someone else, because he had been familiarly addressed by His Lordship in a public place, and had been “honoured” by a few minutes’ conversation. That was not, of course, a tip in the ordinary sense of the word, but it amounted, however, to the same thing. It secured a good berth to his “Excellency.” And what say you of the whiskies and waters, brandies and sodas, the champagne, oysters, luncheons, anddinners to which our good city men generously ask a would-be customer? That, I suppose, is called “paving the way to a good business.” I have not unfrequently heard people regret that they were unable to refuse a favour in return for a civility. That civility was most likely a dinner, or even something less. Kisses distributed by ladies in hotly-contested constituencies, the promise of a Government post, an invitation to a party, a mere familiar recognition, a penny, are all varieties which make the thing so general.

He believes the custom will die out with human nature.

Wedding presents are not given without anarrière pensée, and at Christmas our object is mostly to please the parents. Our indignation, however, is not roused by this, because we are in the habit, I suppose, of distributing and receiving such acknowledgments ourselves. We want to suppress small tips; in fact, such as are most wanted by the recipient, whose only source of revenue they constitute in many cases. We fail to realise that, were servants well paid, “tipping” would not take the form of an imposition. Employers, especially at hotels and restaurants, either give ridiculously low wages, or suppress these altogether, and in many establishments hire the tables to the waiters at so much a day or week for the privilege of serving. At present this custom has become so deeply rooted that it has given growth to a most perfect secret code of signs and marks by which each class of servants is informed how much he has to expect from the liberality of the inexperienced and unwary stranger. This applies especially to hotel servants, and has become the crying abuse against which we try to react. This code is not local, but has acquired an internationality which professors of Volapuk would be proud to claim for their language. I remember once an irascible old gentleman complaining bitterly against the incivility of the hotel servants, who never helped him with his traps. He found no exception to the rule except when his wanderings took him to some remote part of Scotland, where, he assured me, the “braying of the socialist pedants had not yet been heard.” I suspected that my friend was not over-generous, and timidly sounded him on the point. His reply confirmed my suspicion. I thereupon showed him the cause of the servants’ inattention, amounting sometimes even to rudeness—alittle chalk mark on each bag. I advised him to carefully wipe that off after leaving the hotels. The effect was mostsatisfactory—my friend has had no reason to complain since, at least when he got into a hotel. The position of hotel labels also serves to indicate if anything can be expected from the traveller. Of course, this is not countenanced by “mine host,” who dismisses the user of such messages, but as that man is generally a wide-awake and useful rogue, there is little doubt but that he is reinstated in his functions shortly after the traveller is gone. Beggars and tramps have a similar system of conveying to theirconfrèresinformation as to the likely reception they may expect from the occupants of the different residences on the road. They never fail to warn them against dogs and other disagreeable surprise or dangers, should they by some unaccountable absent-mindedness forget that there is such a thing as the eighth commandment. In conclusion,pourboire,buona mancia,backshish, tipping or bribery, was born with man, and will only die out with him.

Giuseppe of the Cafe Doney, at Florence: his experience.

Ah! Milor, what do I think of “teeping?” What would become of me without it? In some forty or fifty years I shall be a rich man, and perhaps keep acafémyself, thanks to the benevolence and generosity of the American and English milors. At first I was a cabman, but in Italy no one gives the cabman apourboire; so my friends said, “Ah! Giuseppe, you must make money somehow. Become a waiter, and you will grow rich.” So they took me to our padrone, and he made me a waiter, and I am growing rich on “teeps.” But it is not my own compatriots, Milor, who make me rich. When I attend one of them, he will only give me ten centimes (a penny), and if I attend two of them they will give me fifteen centimes between them. But the English and Americans will sometimes give me fifty or a hundred centimes at a time. But, alas! that happens very seldom. When I am in luck I save two hundred centimes a day (1s. 8d.), and shall, in a great many years, have acaféof my own. Perhaps Milor will assist?Grazie.

The head waiter at the——   sets forth his views.

Instead of complaining against tipping, the public should oblige the employers to pay their servants more liberally. In modern restaurants—and I suppose the custom has come from Paris—waiters have to pay the employers sums varying from one to four shillings a day according to the number and position of tables they serve. Their work averages from fourteen to sixteen hoursa day. It begins at eight, and sometimes long after midnight they are still at work. Out of their earnings they have to pay all breakages and washing, and, for the thirty to thirty-five shillings they earn a week, they have to put up, from a class of customers, with patience and a perpetual smile, more abuse than one in any other ten men would stand. It not unfrequently happens that a waiter would do without it rather than accept a tip which assumes the form of an insult. We look upon it as a remuneration due to us, and, after trying to satisfy the client, we do not see why he should think it an unbearable nuisance, and treat the recipient with contempt. In many cases, after exacting the most constant attention, and heaping unmerited abuse on the irresponsible waiter, the client who has most likely spent on himself enough to keep a family a whole week, grudges the sixpence he has to give the attendant, and makes him feel it by throwing the coppers down, accompanying the action by an insulting remark. Like all men whose business it is to minister to the comfort of others, many among us are very shrewd observers, and can tell at a glance what treatment we may expect from certain customers, and we behave accordingly. We are seldom mistaken in our judgment. Experience has taught us that the most generous, and at the same time most gentlemanly, “tippers” are the Israelitish Anglo-German financiers. There is a difference between them and the young spendthrift who inconsiderately throws away his money. No, sir, the Anglo-German banker, orders, goes carefully through the account, and then gives his money liberally. After him comes the Russian. The Englishman, who is next best, is closely followed by the French and German.

His opinion of Americans as tippers.

The American is nowhere. It is a mistaken idea to believe that he is generous. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but the majority of them come out here just to see the sights, and talk about them on their return. A certain sum is laid aside for the purpose, and I am sure they contrive to make economies upon it. The Americans are, besides, disagreeable to serve. They never lose the opportunity of making disparaging comparisons between their country and the old world. Our restaurants are country inns compared to theirs, their waiters are smarter, their services of better class, our cooking is miles behind theirs, and as toconcoction of drinks, of course we have to take a back seat. We are also very slow. A steak, in Chicago, for instance, is cooked in about the fifteenth of the time required here. When it comes to paying, the American finds that everything is also dearer over here; gives very little or nothing tothat inattentive waiter, threatens to lodge a complaint against him, and goes away satisfied that everyone is impressed by the grandeur of the Great Republic as represented by himself, one of its worthy citizens.

Of Scotchmen and millionaires.

In England, the Scotch are the least liberal. In Scotland, waiters and hotel servants are paid. An attempt to introduce in Edinburgh the continental system failed most ignominiously in 1886, and the enterprisingrestaurateurhad to revert to the local system, and replace all the former waiters, who ran back to London rather than be reduced to the dire necessity of going into the workhouse. Young men, as a rule, are more generous than elderly people, and the fair sex is, in general, very stingy. A gentleman accompanied by a lady, if she is only an acquaintance, is sure to tip generously,pour la galerie, although he may look as if he wanted to accompany every penny by a kick. But when the same person dines with his wife or sister, the remuneration is as small as decency can permit. When a waiter spots such a relation between a party of diners, he generally tries to escape the obligation of offering them a table. At the large restaurants we gauge the diners’ liberality very frequently at one glance, and in any case form an accurate opinion of him by the way he orders hismenu. We know whether we have to do with a gentleman or a cad, and whether his subsequent parsimoniousness is caused by cussedness or simply ignorance of the customs of such establishments, and we treat him in consequence. It is pitiful sometimes to see all the ruses employed by well-meaning people, unwilling to be thought unaccustomed to the life of a large restaurant, and my advice to such persons would be to remain natural rather than become ridiculous. The manner in which the tip is given varies according to the nationality and character of the donor. The most ostentatious among these is the South American millionaire, whose gift varies according to the number of people present. As a rule, the wealthy man is not generous.

A commissionnaire can tell people’s dispositions at sight.

I can say at first sight whether a person is of a kindly disposition, for I would rather assist such a person and get nothing than one who makes me feel the weight of his liberality. The amount a man may make depends a great deal on his wits. To forestall a gentleman’s wishes, give him the necessary information, and to the point; to assist him when assistance is most needed, and not before, is what is most appreciated. When in a theatre I see a couple occupying a bad seat, when better ones are vacant, I make the suggestion, and would certainly be astonished if the gentleman did not acknowledge the hint. When the working classes do not syndicate they have to accept wages so ridiculously low that they are obliged to find some means of increasing their earnings. But will it ever be possible to suppress the “evil”? Allow me to doubt it. The thing is, therefore, to prevent tipping taking the form of an imposition. This can only be done by paying good wages.

Barr gives the straight tip.

A native of Cuba once said to me, with an air of proud superiority, “We have the yellow feveralwaysin Havana.” I was unable to make any such boastful claim for North America, and so the Cuban rightly thought he had the advantage of me. They think nothing of the yellow fever in Havana, but when the malady is imported into Florida the people of that peninsula become panic-stricken. The yellow fever in the Southern States strikes terror. It seems to be worse in its effects when it enters the States than it is where they always have it. So it is with tipping. It is always present in Europe in a mild form, but periodically tipping swoops down upon the United States, and its effects are dreadful to contemplate. If tipping ever becomes epidemic in America, the unfortunate citizens will have to leave, and seek a cheaper country, for the haughty waiter in an American hotel scorns the humbler coins of the realm, and accepts nothing less than half a dollar. Happily, tipping has, up to date, been more or less of an exotic in America, but I have grave fears that the Chicago Exhibition, attracting as it does so many incurable tippers from Europe, will cause the disease to take firm root in the States, and entail years of suffering hereafter.

Summing up.

I do not agree with the member of the club who holds in one paragraph that Scotsmen are mean in the giving of tips. Speaking as a Scotsman myself, I admit that we like to go the whole distance from Liverpool Streetto Charing Cross for our penny. We desire to get the worth of our bawbee. And it is a cold day when we don’t. But it must be remembered that a Scotsman is conscientious, and he knows that tipping is an indefensible vice, so he discourages it as much as possible, being compelled by custom to fall in with it. Then, again, the man who claims that Americans are not liberal doesn’t know what he is talking about. The trouble with the American is that he does not know the exact amount to give, and that bothers him, and causes him to curse the custom in choice and varied language. Speaking now as an American, I will give a tip right here. If Conan Doyle, or George Meredith, or some author in whom Americans have confidence, would get out a book entitled, say, “The Right Tip, or Tuppence on the Shilling,” giving exactly the correct sum to pay on all occasions, Americans would buy up the whole edition and bless the author. I think Americans are altogether too lavish with their tips, and thus make it difficult for us poorer people, whom nobody tips, to get along. A friend of mine, on leaving one of the big London hotels, changed several five pound notes into half-crowns, and distributed these coins right and left all the way from his rooms to the carriage, giving one or more to every person who looked as if he would accept. He met no refusals, and departed amidst muchéclat. He thought he had done the square thing, as he expressed it, but I looked on the action as corrupting and indefensible. He deserves to have his name blazoned here as a warning, but I shall not mention it, merely contenting myself by saying that he was formerly a United States senator, was at that time Minister to Spain, and is at the present moment President of the World’s Fair.

The portrait of Mrs. Henniker, which appeared inThe Idlerfor May—“Lions in their Dens”: V.The Lord Lieutenant at Dublin Castle—was from a photograph taken by Messrs.Werner and Son, of Dublin.

The portrait of Mrs. Henniker, which appeared inThe Idlerfor May—“Lions in their Dens”: V.The Lord Lieutenant at Dublin Castle—was from a photograph taken by Messrs.Werner and Son, of Dublin.

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