, disgusted. "Who's talking about cooks?
These fellers ain't cooks--they're--"
"I know. They're waiters. Now, there 'tis again. When I give an order
and there's any back talk, I want to understand it. You take a passel of
college fellers, like you want to hire for waiters. S'pose I tell one
of 'em to do something, and he answers back in Greek or Hindoo, or such.
_I_ can't tell what he says. I sha'n't know whether to bang him over the
head or give him a cigar. What's the matter with the waiters we had last
year? They talked Irish, of course, but I understood the most of that,
and when I didn't 'twas safe to roll up my sleeves and begin arguing.
But--"
"Oh, ring off!" says Peter. "Twenty-three!"
And so they had it, back and forth. I didn't say nothing. I knew how
'twould end. If Peter T. Brown thought 'twas good judgment to hire a
mess of college boys for waiters, fellers who could order up the squab
in pigeon-English and the ham in hog-Latin, I didn't care, so long as
the orders and boarders got filled and the payroll didn't have growing
pains. I had considerable faith in Brown's ideas, and he was as set on
this one as a Brahma hen on a plaster nest-egg.
"It'll give tone to the shebang," says he, referring to the hotel; "and
we want to keep the Old Home House as high-toned as a ten-story organ
factory. And as for education, that's a matter of taste. Me, I'd just as
soon have a waiter that bashfully admitted 'Wee, my dam,' as I would one
that pushed 'Shur-r-e, Moike!' edge-ways out of one corner of his mouth
and served the lettuce on top of the lobster, from principle, to keep
the green above the red.
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