Читать книгу A Search for America - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 6

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I had rented a room, without board, for two dollars a week. I do not remember the street nor the exact location. It was somewhere east of Yonge Street, in a quiet, residential place. Restful it might have been; but for me, of course, there was no rest.

Beginning with the second day of my stay at Toronto, I began to look for work. The stranger in the train had advised me to study the advertisements in the daily papers; that is what I did. Since I meant to save in the most desperate way, I did not even buy the papers. Every morning and every night I went to the various newspaper offices, waiting till the sheets were put on file for inspection. Armed with a note book and a pencil, I made a list of all the positions that were offered and which I thought I could fill. Luck was against me. I remember as typical one incident in this first heart-breaking initiation into the chase. A steam-laundry had advertised for a clerk, "apply there and there at 4 p.m." I went at three, an hour ahead of time, and found a queue of fifty or more applicants waiting. I did not get the impression that "help" was scarce in the city; it seemed to me rather that work was scarce. To this very day I have not yet succeeded in reconciling the contradictory statements which you hear according as you are interviewing those who are looking for help or those who are looking for work. The position was filled, of course, before it came to be my turn.

Far and away the majority of the advertisements began with the words, "Wanted, an experienced . . ." whatever it was. Experience was what I lacked no matter what the line of business might be. I did not dare to apply.

There were also many advertisements grouped together under the heading "Agents wanted." Some of them stated expressly, "Experience unnecessary" or "We teach you". A number of these I answered. Most of the men who received me did not give me a chance to say much. "I am afraid we cannot do business with you." "Sorry; get rid of your brogue, and we might see." Such were two of the answers I received most frequently. Ever recurring there came the question, "How long have you been in this country?" Gradually, during a week of heart-breaking and desperate endeavour, the conviction was borne in upon me that my appearance--among other things the plainly old-country cut of my suits--stood in the way of my success. The man I met sized me up, with a brief, searching look, saw how "green" I was, and dismissed me curtly, sometimes not even troubling to be civil about it.

Three or four of these advertisements led me to men, however, who spoke differently. They were polite and exceedingly sympathetic, even to subserviency. Invariably I found after much preliminary conversation that what they were after was not my services but my money. To hear them, it was astonishing what a small amount invested would do for me. It was astonishing, too, that the sum needed for a start in their particular line of business was always within a few dollars of what I actually had. Not that a larger sum would not have been highly desirable. Since I was to double or treble my money within a week or a fortnight, the larger the amount with which I started, the larger, too, of course, the profits to be garnered. According to them most Canadian millionaires had begun with pretty accurately two hundred and fifty dollars. Unfortunately for them and, as far as I know, for myself as well, I was altogether too regretfully reluctant to part with my money even for so short a space of time as a single week. I came to the point where I felt discouraged the moment a man treated me with common courtesy.

Meanwhile I learned to know the city fairly well. I began to get used to the fact that the amazingly numerous churches advertised their services in various ways--a fact that had greatly shocked me at first. I assimilated the ways of dairy-lunch rooms and high-stool counters. And I became convinced that women who walked or rode about unattended, flaunting their clothes in fashions more "outré" than I had ever seen them at Paris or Nice, could not necessarily be put down as belonging to the "half-world." It is not meant as a criticism if I state that before I was inured to the finer wrinkles of American fashions, it seemed to me as if shop-girl and well-to-do "bourgeoise" alike tried their utmost to look identically like a "cocotte".

Sunday came. All morning I rode around the city on a belt-line car, looking down from the heights over the spacious or huddled streets and feeling baffled, defeated, miserable. I reproached myself for not having called at Simpson's the day before. I needed a cheering-up about as badly as anybody can need it at any time. Pride had stood in my way. Surely, I must be good for something? Surely, I could somewhere find a breach to take this fortress? For by this time I looked upon my fellow-applicants for positions as defenders against me, the intruder. I did not like to look Bennett in the eye once more as somebody prowling about "on the outside". I was willing to do no matter what. His boy was making ten dollars a week; and I was to fall down? That was what I had said to myself that Saturday night.

By noon I felt the need of company so strongly that, after taking a frugal lunch, I went to the beach. Merely to see humanity, I thought, would help me. But I was by this time so thoroughly discouraged that I saw whatever presented itself to my eyes through the darkened glasses of doom. The beach houses struck me as flimsy, the picnic grounds of the island as litters of paper and left-overs of lunches, the crowds as a rabble. Not even the trees or the lake made any appeal. Nothing seemed to be able to pull me out of my wretched self-consciousness and alarm.

Then I sat down on a bench. I did some searching and thinking. I thought of the associations of my past, and I began to see even them in a new light.

My criticism probed into the lives and careers of all the young men I had known over yonder. Those who apparently had been the most independent, had been so because they had inherited money. In other words, they had been parasites! I was horror-struck at the word. Looking back at it now, I am chiefly struck by the ease with which this young man slipped into socialist views and phraseologies as soon as he was stripped of his social pretensions. That could not have happened in Europe--not, at least, at the time; and since the conditions of that time are rapidly passing away, I might add another word. No matter how miserable I might--in Europe--have felt in my innermost heart, the mere deference shown by "subordinates" to my appearance, my bearing, and my clothes would have kept up the pretence of a certain superiority. In Europe I should have lapsed into the most comfortable of all deceptions, self-commiseration: "a smile on the lips, and death in my heart". Here I was simply roused to revolt. Nobody paid the slightest attention to me. If in all this gaiety a girl or a boy had a look for me at all, the girl betrayed no admiration in her eye, the boy felt not subdued by my mere presence. This was truth!

Parasites, yes! And those who had not inherited any money, or not enough to make them entirely "independent", had dropped into careers which were carefully prepared and prearranged for them. These careers were like the track of a railway roadbed. The young men were like the trains. They did not go where they listed; they went where the rails might lead. Tradition governed them all. Of course, I was thinking of the young men of my own class only; the lower strata of society I did not know. I thought of Niels, André, van Els, and Sidney; I tried to figure them--who had been successful as young professional men--in my situation. Why, they would have been as helpless--more helpless than I was. How easy it seemed to follow the beaten road--how different to go out as a pioneer!

But, had not that beaten road stretched before myself as well? If only I had known from the beginning that I must go it? But should I have done so? Was I to go back? It would still have been easy. I should have been away for a month or so--on a trip across the Atlantic. Nobody needed to know what desperate thoughts had held me in their grip. Deep in my innermost heart I should be possessed of a wisdom beyond all their wisdom--of that knowledge which comes from having looked down into that deadly maelstrom which is real life reduced to its lowest terms. There were still possibilities. I could still drop into this or that; could surely make some kind of a living by stepping down somewhat lower than I had so far contemplated while I was thinking of Europe.

But I knew. As soon as I began to face the thought of turning back, I knew that all that was impossible now. I was like one who has received a revelation. Here I was in a different world. Here I stood entirely on my own feet. Whatever I might have to go through, if finally I arrived somewhere, if I achieved something, no matter how little, it would be my own achievement; I must be I.

Could a man starve in this great country? If so, starve I would. Could a man go under, plunge below the surface into that underworld which we call crime? Well and good; rather become a criminal than turn back on the road! Here I was, and here I should stay! Somewhere, somehow I should find a place, a niche into which I fitted or could fit myself; and when I had found it, then it would be time for the final search after equilibrium and happiness, not before!

Monday morning's search through the back-pages of the early papers raised a hope. There were two advertisements calling for waiters in restaurants. I was willing to do no matter what. I neglected everything else and took note of the two addresses. One of them was on King Street, the other on Yonge Street.

I found both places at once and discovered that neither would be open before eight o'clock. The one on King Street was a large affair occupying the ground-floor of a business block. It looked cosy and exclusive; the huge windows being hung with wide lace-curtains flanked by heavy draperies. Nothing but a monogram woven into the lace of the curtains indicated the name of the place. Through the film of their patterns I caught sight of many small tables deeply hung with immaculate linen.

The one on Yonge Street consisted of a low, narrow building squeezed in between two tall and massive structures. It displayed fruit and fowl in two uncurtained windows which flanked a double-plate-glass door. Through the glass of this door I caught sight of a booth built into the right-hand side of the entrance, and, in the booth, of a cash-register. To the left of the long, narrow dining-room there stretched a long, narrow counter with glass-cases on top in which a white-smocked attendant was arranging pies and pastry. As far as I could see, the place was quite as clean as you could wish. I crossed over to the other side of the street; from there I saw that a large, black-glass sign with gilt letters five feet high ran across the entire front of the building. "Johnson's Café" the inscription read. A similar, but smaller sign, fastened over the door, bore the words, "The Business Man's Lunch."

In my former, old-world days I should not have been doubtful as to which of the two places I was to enter as a customer. I was still too close to that past not to make up my mind instantly to try the place on King Street first.

The very moment its door was unlocked I entered the restaurant. A smooth-shaved young man in a smoking-jacket tried with a bow and a smile to take charge of me and to conduct me to a seat in the rear of the room, where a huge balcony overroofed half its area. I noticed a semicircular space jutting out from the centre of that balcony, which seemed to indicate that music would be provided for the dinner-hour.

The young man nearly succeeded by his winning manner in changing me, to the profit of his employers, from an applicant for a position into a customer, such was his hypnotic masterfulness in sweeping me forward. In fact, I am afraid, nothing but the lamentable circumstance that all my currency was hidden away in my hat-box and that, unfortunately, I did not carry the hat-box with me, prevented his complete success.

When I realized this phase of the situation, I stopped him short. "Pardon me," I said; "I do not intend to take anything just now. I should like to see the manager."

He turned. "I am sorry," he regretted. "Mr. Wainwright is not in yet. Maybe you could find it convenient to drop in again about noon, sir? Or might I deliver a message?" He still spoke with that compelling, frank, hypnotic smile on his face and with undoubted, nearly ingratiating deference in his tone.

"I read an ad in the paper this morning . . ." I began tentatively.

Instantly his features changed. His lips straightened, the smile dropped out of his eyes. Instead, a grey, steely scrutiny sprang into them. He stood rigidly erect, a medium-sized, alert business man. When I was a boy, I had a "caleidoscope" given to me, a brass-tube resembling a telescope, with a great number of tiny, coloured glass-plates cut in various geometric shapes and set into the wider objective end. When you aimed this instrument at the light, you looked through an eye-piece at a many-coloured mosaic; and when you rotated the tube slowly in front of your eye, suddenly, as a certain point in the rotation was reached, all these little coloured glass-plates would fall into a different arrangement, tumbling about for a fraction of a second in apparent confusion; then, with a slight, clicking sound, a new mosaic presented itself, differing from the first in its general effect and in its figure, but not in its component parts. The change in the face of the young man was like that, as sudden and as surprising. The component parts of the face were still the same; but the expression was altogether new. The salesman had changed into a buyer.

"Looking for work?" he asked curtly. "I am the captain. I hire the help. Vous parlez Français?"

"Parfaitement," I replied. This question restored my confidence; after all, my knowledge was going to count in this business! I spoke with my best Parisian accent. I exulted, for I could see that he accepted a single word as sufficient evidence of my linguistic proficiency. But then came the word which instantly dashed all my hopes to the ground.

"Experienced, of course?"

"No-o," I replied hesitatingly.

"How long have you been here?"

"A week or so."

"Just came over?"

"Yes."

Observe the climax in his questions.

He looked at me with a firm, quiet, thoughtful glance. Like another kaleidoscopic view kindliness replaced in his face the eager scrutiny. I remember that I liked him immensely because he did not at once lower his eye to look at my clothes. He sized me up from my face alone. I fairly longed for him to say, "I shall give you a chance."

Then he spoke; and a feeling of hopelessly sliding down into the bottomless void took hold of me.

"Sorry," he said. "I can see you have been used to look at this business from the other fellow's side. All the more sorry. For that's the type we should like to have. But there are details. Suppose you have never handled a tray full of dishes? I thought so. Has to be learned, you know. Sorry. Why this? Have you tried any other line?"

"Everything," I said in a tone which betrayed my disappointment.

"Sorry. Awfully sorry. But wait. I'll tell you. You try Johnson's. They are shorthanded too. Ask for Mr. Carlton, the manager. If he turns you down, come back and let me know. I might be able to do something for you, there. Beastly place, you know. But you will have to learn somewhere. If you make good there, you can get in here. But I cannot take on a raw recruit. We don't even as a rule advertise. Get our help through agencies. But we were caught, this time. Still . . . No, I can't do it."

And his face broke out into a smile quite different from that hypnotic, masterful smile which he reserved for the guest whom he guided where he wanted to place him.

"Leave your name with me, will you? Try Johnson's, and good luck to you."

He shook hands, and I was in the street.

I came dangerously near crying with rage. This failure to secure what I had been after affected me more cruelly than any previous rebuff had done. Here I could not attribute it to any preconceived notion, any silly prejudice, nor to the antagonized unmannerliness of the employer who did not wish to engage a constant rebuke to his own lack of breeding. This young chap, though likely he had never partaken of my own social pretensions, had my own mentality; I should have liked to be initiated under his direction into the mysteries of this business. And he referred me to a "beastly place" to learn!

I walked the streets till after ten o'clock before I had quieted down sufficiently to see that I must go to the other restaurant and try again. I nearly wished that I might be "turned down", there, too.

I entered the glass-doors at half past ten. I came into an extraordinarily long and narrow, corridor-like room the walls of which consisted of huge mirrors. The front half was level with the street outside. Behind, four steps led up to a higher part, at the far end of which two swinging doors led into what for me was still the unknown. A long line of narrow-winged electric fans were hanging from the ceiling. In the front-room the right hand wall, in the rear-room both walls were lined with tables placed between stall-like, high-backed, leather-cushioned benches which gave privacy. Between counter and stalls large, circular tables, seating, and laid for, eight persons, formed a long, long line. At or near every one of these tables I saw a waiter in white jacket and black tie, his legs hidden by a large, white apron. It struck me only now, in retrospection, that in the dining-room of the King Street restaurant no waiters had been visible. The same arrangement seemed to be repeated in the higher room behind.

I turned to the young lady in the booth.

"Just a moment," she said when I expressed the desire to see Mr. Carlton, the manager; and she tapped the button of a bell which stood at her elbow.

A uniformed boy arose from nowhere in particular. She bent her face down to the window in the glass-front of her booth.

"Caller for Mr. Carlton," she said to him: and to me, "Please to follow the boy."

The boy led me through the front-room and up the steps at the end of it. On each side of these steps there was a sort of niche or recess, hidden from the public eye by two or three large cretonne screens stretched in bamboo frames. The one to the left was apparently meant as a stall for a small orchestra, for I caught a glimpse of a piano and of two or three music-stands. The other one was the manager's office.

"Gentleman to see you, sir," said the boy into the crack between two screens; and he retreated.

I entered through the same opening, and, once inside, I noticed that, though from the outside you could see neither the man nor the desk at which he was sitting, yet the cretonne was light enough to permit him to watch whatever was going on in either of the dining-rooms. It took me a few seconds to get used to the dim light prevailing here before I was able to judge of the features of the man.

Fortunately he was busy with some papers when I entered; and just as I was collecting myself, the bell of the telephone at his elbow rang.

"Just a moment," he said, taking down the receiver. "Have a seat."

He waved his free hand towards a chair beside the desk.

I looked at the man before me. He was tall, slim, with stooping shoulders. Above all he was grey. The suit he wore was grey; so was the thin hair on the polished skull; so were his eyes; even his skin seemed grey in that light, though later I came to know it as merely pallid, with the pallor of the man who hardly ever goes out to face sun or wind. He was about fifty. The shape of his head was peculiar. The skull sat on a long neck; the nose was curved, fleshy, and mobile; the chin short and receding. The whole head strangely resembled that of a bird. His grey eyes looked out from behind gold-rimmed glasses. Altogether he looked grey, middle-aged, mild, and, at first sight, insignificant.

Like an inspiration it came over me that I had to dominate this man into giving me what I came for. A native American would have said that I had to sell myself to this man. I was glad of the delay. It gave me time to arrange my selling-points. A certain confident elation took hold of me.

"What can I do for you?" he said at last. When he spoke, his long, thin upper lip which was curved and, like his nose, strangely mobile, revealed gold-filled incisors flashing from behind it.

"Mr. Carlton," I began rapidly and with the air of a man conferring a favour upon his interlocutor, "my name is Branden, Phil Branden; I landed in this country not quite two weeks ago. I have never in my life done anything useful; I was raised in the belief that I did not have to. Recently my father died, and I was left without resources. I came to America to make my living. I know you are going to talk of experience. Let me forestall you. I know the restaurant-business thoroughly--from the customer's point of view. Your regular run of waiters do not, although they may be better able to carry a tray full of dishes. Let me make my point clear. It is your business to feed your customer and to serve his food in such a way that he will come back for more. Your ordinary waiter will serve him his steak and wait for him to order Lea and Perrin's or H.P. Sauce to season it. I know just what I should want to have him serve me with my order. So I am going to anticipate his wishes. If I have my weak points, you see, I also have my strong points, just as your so-called experienced waiters. In addition to that, let a Swede, a Frenchman, an Italian, a German enter your place; I shall address him in his own language. That, too, will tend to bring him back. But the best that I can say for myself it that I want to make good. Your place has been named to me by a friend as a good one to learn the restaurant business in. I am for the moment not after wages; in fact, I do not particularly need them; but I want a chance to learn. I look to you to give me that chance."

Mr. Carlton had been looking at me with a quizzical expression on his face while I made this long-winded speech. When I finished, he took up a paper-knife which was lying in front of him, and he smiled more brightly than I should have thought him capable of smiling. I knew, no matter what he might say, that I had gained my point; that certainly put me at my ease.

"You have stated your case pretty well, Mr. . . ."

"Branden," I prompted.

"Mr. Branden," he said. "You have interested me, and that is more than I can say of any applicant who has ever come to me for a job. In order to settle the main point first, I will say right now that I am going to give you your chance. But I shall regard you as an experiment. I cannot quite agree with everything you said, but I am willing to try you out. I will state our own case as frankly as you have stated yours. We--I happen to be a partner of Mr. Johnson's--are in this business not so much in order to please our customers as in order to get their money out of their pockets into ours. Unfortunately some of our customers will, like ourselves, insist on having luxuries like Lea and Perrins' Sauce with their steak. But to that extent the one who asks for it is undesirable. The one who does not ask for it we do not intend to supply with it, because that means money in our pocket. We are delighted whenever a customer orders something which he intends to pay for. But when he orders what he expects us to give away, we comply within reason, but we do so with reluctance. We do not show it, of course. We serve a certain class of customers who as a rule are not too particular. We serve them at a certain price to yield us a profit. Our profit on a single order is not large; so we consider that we are giving value for the public's money. We charge five cents for a cup of coffee. If the customer asked for cream with his coffee we should have to take a loss if we complied without an extra charge. It is up to the waiter to call his attention to the fact that he will have to pay an additional five cents for a small jug of cream. Of course, we also handle the higher-priced orders of more exclusive eating-houses; with those we can afford to serve whatever the customer cares to have, provided he comes for it at the right time. But our rush-hour business is conducted on a narrow margin. At that time we should prefer the man who demands your kind of service to go elsewhere. We want our waiters then to serve our customer as quickly as possible; and we want our customer to eat as fast as he can in order to make room for the next one. We supply a demand. Your idea of service is right to a certain extent, of course. We do not look for ideas in our waiters, though. If you were to serve tomato-catsup with every order of whitefish, let me say, you would do so to the detriment of your employers' profits. And that in a two-fold way. The lunch-hour and supper-hour client of this dining-room is apt to get spoiled. He is apt, if he is given the chance, to take ten cents' worth of catsup with an order that yields only ten cents profit. We prefer not to give him that chance. And besides, to put it cynically, he will linger too long over his plate, if he enjoys his food beyond its mere filling powers. So he will keep the next one from giving us what we are after, our legitimate profit."

Mr. Carlton laughed. "I do not know," he went on, "that I have ever explained these things to a waiter before. You seem to be rather out of the ordinary. But I have a few more things to say with regard to yourself. Do not for a moment think that this is a nice business for you to enter. I have worked my way up in it; believe me, I know it. I have been in it ever since I was a little boy. We operate a chain of eating-places in this city; that is to say, Mr. Johnson does; I am concerned only in this particular dining-room; the others are lunch-counters. Now I have told you already that I am willing to give you the chance you ask for--provided you care to take it on my conditions. I cannot put you on as a waiter at once. But I will take you on as a omnibus. You will have to help the regular waiters out, carry trays full of soiled dishes to the kitchen, help to clean the silver and make yourself generally useful. As you suggested yourself, you will have to learn to handle dishes in the mass. Besides, have you thought of the fact that an American bill-of-fare probably is something entirely different from that of Europe? I advise you to study the menu every day and to familiarize yourself with the kind of orders we serve. As soon as I think you are ready to start waiting on tables, I shall give you a chance to do so, possibly in a couple of weeks. You will have to trust yourself to me in that respect. As for the wages, we pay an experienced omnibus as much as a waiter, six dollars a week. I shall start you on four and a half. The waiter, of course, regards the wages as a comparatively unimportant item. He figures on tips. I believe that the best of our waiters clear up to twenty dollars a week in tips, maybe more; I do not know; they are secretive about it. But they do get tips, in spite of the fact that two things operate against them in this cafe; firstly, the class of customers--clerks, small storekeepers, steamship and railroad employees, etc., men, in short, who are not overly liberal; and secondly, the fact that it is strictly against the rules for a waiter to collect the amount of the check; he must refer the customer to the desk."

Silence fell. I felt sobered. Since I had settled the main point, that of securing "some kind of work", I relapsed into a critical state of mind. A boy of fifteen and ten dollars a week--I and four and a half! But I was determined to accept, of course.

"And the hours?"

"From ten a.m. to two a.m.," said Mr. Carlton. "We expect you to be here at ten o'clock in the morning if you want to get your breakfast. If not, at half past ten. Your work starts at eleven sharp. You get your board, of course. We close the doors at two o'clock in the morning. A customer who enters the place at a minute to two must be taken care of. But nobody is admitted after that hour. Then you will have to clear the floor for sweeping, and mostly you will be ready to leave at a quarter past."

"Very well," I said and rose. "When do I start in?"

"You may report to-morrow morning. Black trousers and black shoes and tie; white shirt, white jacket and apron."

"Where do I get those?"

"At Simpson's. You mention Johnson's cafe, and they will fix you up. You should buy two jackets and three aprons for a start. They will be laundered daily at a charge of fifty cents a week."

"Well, till to-morrow morning," I said and turned to go.

"I shall keep an eye on you. So long."

It is a fact that I felt elated and depressed at the same time. My case may be hard to understand. As a rule the immigrant who goes from one country to another still preserves some connecting-link with his past. He continues in the same work which he has been doing; and, while he learns new ways of doing his work, he moves among the same class of people to which he belongs himself. He may even keep up pretty close relations with his old environment. Letters at least will arrive. I do not mean to use the word "class" here in a sense indicative of air-tight partitions between social strata; in that sense class does not exist in America. There still remains the use of the word as a convenient synonym for "social environment."

I had stepped from what I could not help regarding as a well-ordered, comfortable environment into what had upon me the effect of an utter chaos. For the moment all human contact was non-existent. I felt that not only had I to learn a great many things, the social connections of a world entirely different from the world I knew, for instance; but I also had laboriously to tear down or at least to submerge what I had built up before--my tastes, inclinations, interests. My every-day conversation had so far been about books, pictures, scientific research. Not a word had I heard or spoken about these things since I had set foot on the liner which took me across the Atlantic. In Europe, no matter with whom or about what I might have been speaking, my intercourse with other people had been characterized by that exceeding considerateness which we call culture. Here everybody, even the few that were friendly, seemed bent upon doing what in my former world had seemed to be the unpardonable social sin, and which is described by the slang phrase "rubbing it in". Had I been born as the son of a waiter, I should have taken a thousand things for granted which now caused in me a very acute revolt. Had I at least been born in America, the atmosphere, which I frankly acknowledged to be a more healthy one that that of Europe, would not have appeared so strange, so hostile when it was merely indifferent. Had I lastly not been so carefully trained in the gentle art of doing nothing, I should not, in spite of better judgment, instinctively have shrunk from soiling my fingers.

As it was, I realized with a gulp that I had become an "omnibus" in a cheap eating-house. In order to earn the distinction of waiting at the table on clerks and small trades-people, I was expected to prove my ability!

But I also felt elated. The curious thing is that I actually took pride in the fact that I had been able to "stoop so low". A few years ago I had felt proud because I possessed fourteenth-century manuscripts of ancient authors. Why? I had paid a high price for them. Now I had achieved economic independence and prided myself upon it. Why? The price was high.

It is indicative of the state of my feelings that in the afternoon I walked several times all around Simpson's emporium before I could bring myself to enter and to ask for a waiter's outfit. Unreasonably, I expected the salesman to treat me with utter contempt on hearing what it was I wanted to purchase. It upset all my ideas, or rather my instinctive expectations when I found that not only did he treat me with perfect politeness, but that he even went to quite a little trouble in order to sell me a greater number of jackets and aprons than I had intended to buy. I believe I felt distinctly flattered when he delicately suggested that for a waiter of my fastidious tastes it would be revolting to don a jacket that was just being returned from the laundry, stiff, clammy, unproperly aired. He sold me three; a more daring psychologist might have sold me a dozen just as easily.