The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-01 00:00:00

A Penny for the Waiter.

Dr. Johnson was fond of maintaining that, on an
almost incredibly small sum per annum a man might
live very respectably in London, though he admitted
that this reconciliation of cheap living with respecta-
bility could not be effected without some inconveni-
ences, one of which was the penalty of avoiding
fashionable society except on " clean shirt days."
It was not a mere theory with the doctor, but an art
which the brave fellow had been compelled to reduce
to practice when he came up to town with his friend
Garrick, and began to write for the booksellers. For
a few coppers, Johnson told Boswell, he used to dine
at a tavern, at the same table with intelligent and
well informed men, who could afford, and who paid
for, better dinners than his. " And, sir," he added,
"I was the best served, for they only gave a halfpenny
to the waiter, and I gave a penny." It won!cl be easy
enough, no doubt, to trace the custom of the waiter's
penny far beyond the time when Mr. Cave kept
shop at St. John's Gate, and the future author of
" Itasselas " was " a young man from the country ;"
but it is enough to know that this penny has con-
tinued in circulation so long, before we ask, When
is it likely to be called in or worn out ? It is a tax
which in general is lightly felt and therefore easily
borne ; it may often he considered a bore, but it
hardly reaches the dignity of an abuse; and any
waiter to whom you give a penny could no doubt
supply you with cogent reasons why he should put
it in his pocket, though he might be unable to con-
vince a logician that the public ought to pay the
waiter, and that the waiter ought to pay his
employer for allowing the public to do
so. Vails to servants were, at one time, an
almost universal nuisance, which seems at
last to have died from rapid overgrowth.
It grew so tall and so stout that it fairly blocked up,
the doorways of hospitable men, for persons of mo-
derate means could not afford to forsake the com-
parative cheapness of an hotel, and by visiting at a
private house, incur the payment of a month's wages
to each of the servants. If vails have not gone en-
tirely out of fashion—and it would be peevish to
desire that they should—their payment is no longer
the system that it once was, and now if a friend
likes to receive us with empty pockets, we need not
feel ourselves smitten down beneath the patronising
airs of his butler, or withered by the reproach-
ful looks of his housemaid. The expiration of
the system only did harm to those employers
whose servants depended for their wages upon the
gifts they received ; but if the " penny for the
waiter" were put out ofcirculation to-morrow, neither
master, nor man, nor customer would be injured
thereby. In the interests of the vast numbers of
people who, in all large towns, are daily in the
habit of dining at eating houses and hotels, we
might ask why this tax, of a penny in the shilling
say, should be levied at all. You may buy a suit
of clothes, or a box full of books and cigars, without
any gratuity to the person who serves you—why
not a dinner ? The tailor, the bookseller, or the
tobacconist pays his servants, and no doubt his cus-
tomers keep them. That is, he pays the
wages of his servants out of the profits of his
trade. It is just the same with the butcher,
and we should like to see it satisfactorily ex-
plained why the man who sells raw meat should
pay his own servants, while the man who sells
cooked meat should not only expect the public to
pav his servants, but, in a vast number of cases,
compels his servants to pay him for the privilege of
working under him. One would think it would be
just as easy for him to pay his own waiters, and
advance the price of his beef and mutton. It would
simply be to substitute indirect for direct taxation.
Bur, no ; let the waiter have his penny. The CUE-
torn is ancient, and let it continue, if only out of
respect for the memory of 1)r. Johnson. It is only
because it seems to involvo a stupid principle that
we have referred to it. If it is not too stupid to
live, it is hardly worth going out of the way
to put it oat of life.—London .Review.

TIME ENOUGH FOR IT!—A grand hall for the
Inner Temple is said to be in contemplation. That of Lin-
coln's Inn cost; ''o believe, over £150,000.
FRENCH BABIES!--The present annual average
of enfants tronves for all France is about 25,000:
some 2,000 of them die immediately, but the remaining
23,000 may be supposed to be put out to nurse in the coun-
try. It is probable that at least 50,000 more are similarly
placed by their own relations ; indeed, M. Husson states
that the capital alone sends 15,000 children to country nurses
every year. The total nurabsr of babies annually quartered
in the villages may, therefore, be taken at a probable mini-
mum of 73,000.—.Bentley's Miscellany, for September.