Twenty years at the Cafe de la Paix in Paris, and three years
here. Do you wonder?"
There are in my experience but four kinds of waiters the world over.
First, the thin, nervous waiter, with a set smile, who is always
brushing away imaginary crumbs, adjusting the glasses--an inch this way,
an inch that way, and then back again to their first position, talking
all the time, whether spoken to or not, and losing interest the moment
you pay him his fee. Then the stolid, half-asleep waiter, fat and
perpetually moist, who considers his duties over when he has placed your
order on the cloth and moved the wine within reach of your hand. Next
the apprentice waiter, promoted from assistant cook or scullion-boy, who
carries on a conversation in signs behind your back with the waiter
opposite him, smothering his laughter at intervals in the same napkin
with which he wipes your plate, and who, when he changes a course,
slants the dishes up his sleeve, keeping the top one in place with his
chin, replacing the plates again with a wavy motion, as if they were so
many quoits, each one circling into its place--a trick of which he is
immensely proud.
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