they
had been the prattlings of a foolish child.

"You haf nice biftek. Not at all done. Yes?"

"No, I don't," I answered. "I don't want what the cook of a French
provincial hotel calls a biftek. I want something to eat. I want--"
Apparently, he understood neither English nor French.

"Yes, yes," he interrupted cheerfully, "with pottitoes."

"With what?" I asked. I thought for the moment he was suggesting potted
pigs' feet in the nearest English he could get to it.

"Pottito," he repeated; "boil pottito. Yes? And pell hell."

I felt like telling him to go there; I suppose he meant "pale ale." It
took me about five minutes to get that beefsteak out of his head. By the
time I had done it, I did not care what I had for dinner. I took _pot-du-
jour_ and veal. He added, on his own initiative, a thing that looked
like a poultice. I did not try the taste of it. He explained it was
"plum poodeen." I fancy he had made it himself.

This fellow is typical; you meet him everywhere abroad. He translates
your bill into English for you, calls ten centimes a penny, calculates
twelve francs to the pound, and presses a handful of sous affectionately
upon you as change for a napoleon.

The cheating waiter is common to all countries, though in Italy and
Belgium he flourishes, perhaps, more than elsewhere. But the British
waiter, when detected, becomes surly--does not take it nicely. The
foreign waiter is amiable about it--bears no malice. He is grieved,
maybe, at your language, but that is because he is thinking of you--the
possible effect of it upon your future. To try and stop you, he offers
you another four sous. The story is told of a Frenchman who, not knowing
the legal fare, adopted the plan of doling out pennies to a London cabman
one at a time, continuing until the man looked satisfied. Myself, I
doubt the story. From what I know of the London cabman, I can see him
leaning down still, with out-stretched hand, the horse between the shafts
long since dead, the cab chockfull of coppers, and yet no expression of
satiety upon his face.

But the story would appear to have crossed the Channel, and to have
commended itself to the foreign waiter--especially to the railway
refreshment-room waiter. He doles out sous to the traveller, one at a
time, with the air of a man who is giving away the savings of a lifetime.
If, after five minutes or so, you still appear discontented he goes away
quite suddenly. You t