going, and the "neck" is
usually the place where it first attracts his attention. It is not a
new thing, by any means, for the Greeks suffered more from it than we
ever have. They called it "gifts," and if a man didn't give, why, he
got nothing, just as he gets nothing to-day in "Del's" if he tries to
escape with a glad smile instead of the regulation tariff. Usually, as
we all know, the rough time is at the reckoning and the departure, if
you haven't done the handsome. The waiter, if he knows his business,
makes you feel your cheapness if you attempt to "do" him with an
affable "Good-night," instead of the real thing. The change is so
arranged for you that you may have a wide choice of coins, but if that
scheme misses fire, there are still left the overcoat and the hat. The
man who can pass through these ordeals with his nerve unfrayed and look
through the waiter as if he were a pane of glass, would never have
turned a hair if placed in front at the charge of Balaclava. I
remember writing a _menu_ card for a dinner once, and when I came to
the sweetbread course it was shown that if you hadn't a coin you must
still do something. Lucullus was waiting on the bank of the river Styx
for his turn on Charon's ferryboat, and of course, being a shade, he
had no money in his clothes; but this is what was said:

When Lucullus got on Charon's skiff
He didn't have a cent;
So he handed out a sweetbread
And on the boat he went.

This was as straight a tip as was ever given to a waiter or at a
horse-race. There was nothing between Lucullus and the "bread line"
except his last sweetbread; yet as a gentleman he gave it up to the
ferryman rather than lose his poise when leaving the earth.

But to return to the twentieth century, about four thousand years since
the incident just related occurred: we have a variety of names for the
same thing. It is _pour boire_ in France; _tip_ in England; _macaroni_
"for the crew" in Italy; _sugar-cane_ "for the donkey" on the Nile;
_bakshish_ in Africa; "_bakshish_" the first word the traveler hears
when he gets there, "_bakshish_" the last when he is leaving. Why,
they say the Sphinx herself tears her hair and plaintively wails when
the sun has set, "_Bakshish! Bakshish!! Bakshish!!!_" And the only
reason she does not hold out her hands for it is that she hasn't any.

[Illustration: THIS IS WHERE "RAM" FELL DOWN AND HAS NEVER SINCE BEEN
"LIFTED." IT TAKES _PIASTRES_ T