The Spanish Servant Seems To Regard It
As Part Of His Duty To Keep Your Spirits Gently Excited While You Dine
By The Gossip Of The Day.
He joins also in your discussions, whether
they touch lightly on the politics of the hour or plunge profoundly into
the depths of philosophic research.
He laughs at your wit, and swings
his napkin with convulsions of mirth at your good stories. He tells you
the history of his life while you are breaking your egg, and lays the
story of his loves before you with your coffee. Yet he is not intrusive.
He will chatter on without waiting for a reply, and when you are tired
of him you can shut him off with a word. There are few Spanish servants
so uninteresting but that you can find in them from time to time some
sparks of that ineffable light which shines forever in Sancho and
Figaro.
The traditions of subordination, which are the result of long centuries
of tyranny, have prevented the development of that feeling of
independence among the lower orders, which in a freer race finds its
expression in ill manners and discourtesy to superiors. I knew a
gentleman in the West whose circumstances had forced him to become a
waiter in a backwoods restaurant. He bore a deadly grudge at the
profession that kept him from starving, and asserted his unconquered
nobility of soul by scowling at his customers and swearing at the viands
he dispensed. I remember the deep sense of wrong with which he would
growl, "Two buckwheats, begawd!" You see nothing of this defiant spirit
in Spanish servants.
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