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Which is best?

not a traveller but made up his mind to stop,altogether dismissing what feeble thought he had about pushing on another mile or two that night. As for the smell of dinner, I say that depends. One man rings the bell violently, and is fierce about the kitchen-door; another sniffs, and is silent.

Which is best? A good appetite, with a bad dinner; or a bad appetite, with a good dinner?

Don't answer without thinking. There are good sauces besides hunger. A bad dinner is not only unpleasant, but unwholesome. Conceive great appetites and bad dinners universal. The blacks in Australia will eat eight or ten pounds of strong kangaroo at one go. There is much to be said in favour of less hunger and better food. Well! I suppose there is a medium in the matter,—as the hearsay philosopher affirms.

At any rate, please don't pretend a contempt for cookery. There is nothing in the world, my good friend, which you could so ill afford to lose. You don't care what you eat! You deserve to have every spit, range, and pot pass out of creation, and to die of scurvy!

Charity dinners are, though not exclusively,

Charity Dinners.

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yet eminently English. There is the fact of dinner on which to build, around which the floating philanthropy gathers, under which it develops itself. The feeder of the hungry

must first be fed himself. There is thus the realization of the charity in company with the word "dinner," then the actual influence of the food upon the donor.

But I must have done, though I might say much more. The subject is endless: every one is more or less a competent critic. I have been too bold to write on such a theme.

Courteous reader, in rising from the table, let me express a hope that you see a very great difference between "dining" and "getting your dinner." May you never sit down to one without an appetite,-may you never hunger without being able to dine!

HO

WAITERS.

knows anything about about the natural history of waiters? Present

in all lodging-places, with a home in none-moving in the midst of travellers, though never stepping beyond the door of the house in which they live-they form one of the most singular classes in the modern world. Though, probably, on examination, they would be found human enough, yet at first the idea of a waiter shedding tears, making a will or an offer of marriage, or having a tooth drawn, or, in fact, doing anything but wait, could not get itself admitted without a little hitch or hesitation.

Where do

Where do they come from? they learn their craft? We see volunteers, nay, sometimes militiamen, at drill. Ploughmen lead the horses before they drive the plough, artisans pass an apprenticeship, surgeons walk the hospital, and even the grand gentlemen who sit in Government offices have

Their Mode of Life.

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an examination in spelling before they draw their salaries; but who ever heard of a school for waiters ? Perhaps they are born fulldressed, with napkins under their arms. Once here, they never seem to hesitate or fail; and yet their work is arduous, intricate, and incessant, requiring not only ready wit, but both dexterity and strength of arm. I have, however, often noticed that in advertisements they describe themselves as single-handed, as if a watchman were to beg particular attention to the fact of his having only one eye.

Excluded by professional engagements from the use of conventional meal-times, do waiters sit down to their dinner, or shoot it flying? Where do they sleep, oil their hair, and put on their shirt-fronts? Have they any guilds, lodges, or other brotherly associations and meetings? What are their amusements? A countryman once thought he had found them at their winter play: he noticed a set of men in tail-coats and white ties scudding round a patch of ice on the Serpentine, about the size of a coffee room, but it turned out to be the Skating Club. Some little time ago I had a good opportunity of observing the movements of a waiter kept in a seaport town. We were in no hurry,

and so we stopped there till the rain was over.

There was, as tourists say, nothing to see. The inn, which was also a station and a custom-house, had a railway terminus at the front, and a packet wharf at the back door. The land view consisted of saltings; the sea view, of a muddy tidal harbour-both backed by bare bleak downs. We arrived late at night, intending to sail the next morning; but it blew and rained, and then did both together so viciously, that we gave it up, and spent a wet day at the station. Before, however, we settled to stop, we went on board the steamer, moved our luggage, took berths, and made up our minds to bear the usual inconveniences of a rough passage across the channel in a long narrow boat, which heaved as if it were breathing, even in the sheltered harbour. But the wind still rose, and so we all returned to the hotel.

It was during the mental parenthesis which followed, on being suddenly prostrated and set to begin a new bill at the inn from which we had just cleared out, that I gave my mind to the waiter. One could not keep up an interest all day in the zigzag jerky course of fat raindrops down the window. Some of our fellowpassengers smoked, some ate incessantly; group of wet Frenchmen sat apart, limp and