ecognized no sort of difference between the dignity of the different
sorts of work required by the nation. The individual is never regarded,
nor regards himself, as the servant of those he serves, nor is he in
any way dependent upon them. It is always the nation which he is
serving. No difference is recognized between a waiter's functions and
those of any other worker. The fact that his is a personal service is
indifferent from our point of view. So is a doctor's. I should as soon
expect our waiter today to look down on me because I served him as a
doctor, as think of looking down on him because he serves me as a
waiter."

After dinner my entertainers conducted me about the building, of which
the extent, the magnificent architecture and richness of embellishment,
astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely a dining-hall, but
likewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvous of the quarter,
and no appliance of entertainment or recreation seemed lacking.

"You find illustrated here," said Dr. Leete, when I had expressed my
admiration, "what I said to you in our first conversation, when you
were looking out over the city, as to the splendor of our public and
common life as compared with the simplicity of our private and home
life, and the contrast which, in this respect, the twentieth bears to
the nineteenth century. To save ourselves useless burdens, we have as
little gear about us at home as is consistent with comfort, but the
social side of our life is ornate and luxurious beyond anything the
world ever knew before. All the industrial and professional guilds have
clubhouses as extensive as this, as well as country, mountain, and
seaside houses for sport and rest in vacations."

NOTE. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it became a practice
of needy young men at some of the colleges of the country to earn a
little money for their term bills by serving as waiters on tables at
hotels during the long summer vacation. It was claimed, in reply to
critics who expressed the prejudices of the time in asserting that
persons voluntarily following such an occupation could not be
gentlemen, that they were entitled to praise for vindicating, by their
example, the dignity of all honest and necessary labor. The use of this
argument illustrates a common confusion in thought on the part of my
former contemporaries. The business of waiting on tables was in no more
need of defense than most of the other ways of getting