my afternoon
engagements, interlarding it so thickly with countesses and
marchionesses and lords and honourables that though Dawson has passed
soup to duchesses, and scarcely ever handed a plate to anything less
than a baroness, he dilutes the customary scorn of his glance, and
makes it two parts condescending approval as it rests on me, Penelope
Hamilton, of the great American working class (unlimited).

Apropos of the servants, it seems to me that the British footman has
relaxed a trifle since we were last here; or is it possible that he
reaches the height of his immobility at the height of the London season,
and as it declines does he decline and become flesh? At all events, I
have twice seen a footman change his weight from one leg to the other,
as he stood at a shop entrance with his lady's mantle over his arm;
twice have I seen one stroke his chin, and several times have I observed
others, during the month of July, conduct themselves in many respects
like animate objects with vital organs. Lest this incendiary statement
be challenged, levelled as it is at an institution whose stability and
order are but feebly represented by the eternal march of the stars in
their courses, I hasten to explain that in none of these cases cited was
it a powdered footman who (to use a Delsartean expression) withdrew will
from his body and devitalised it before the public eye. I have observed
that the powdered personage has much greater control over his muscles
than the ordinary footman with human hair, and is infinitely his
superior in rigidity. Dawson tells me confidentially that if a footman
smiles there is little chance of his rising in the world. He says a
sense of humour is absolutely fatal in that calling, and that he has
discharged many a good footman because of an intelligent and expressive
face.

I tremble to think of what the powdered footman may become when he
unbends in the bosom of the family. When, in the privacy of his own
apartments, the powder is washed off, the canary-seed pads removed from
his aristocratic calves, and his scarlet and buff magnificence exchanged
for a simple neglige, I should think he might be guilty of almost any
indiscretion or violence. I for one would never consent to be the wife
and children of a powdered footman, and receive him in his moments of
reaction.

Chapter III. Eggs a la coque.

Is it to my credit, or to my eternal dishonour that I once made a
powdered footman smile, and