. . . many minutes before dinner is served, with his napkin tucked in round his neck, and his countenance composed into a look of much resignation. [Page 68] The waiters are for the most part shock-headed boys, in angular-tail coats well up in the back of the neck, who frankly confess, when any order out of the common run of orders is given, that a German patois from the left bank of the Rhine is their only extensive language. One of these won my eternal gratitude by providing a clean fork at a crisis between the last savouries and the plat doux; for the usual practice with the waiters, when anyone neglected to secure his knife and fork for the next course, was to slip the plate from under the unwonted charge, and leave those instruments sprawling on the tablecloth in a vengeful mess of gravy. Chickens' bones were there dealt with on all sides as nature perhaps intended that they should be dealt with, namely, by taking them between finger and thumb, and removing superflu. . . Read More