94 A Walk from 



blandly. He answers a hundred questions, extraneous 

 to the meal, with good-natured readiness. He is a good 

 judge of the weather and its signs. He is well 

 "posted-up" in the local histories and sceneries of the 

 place. He can give political information on both sides, 

 incidents and anecdotes to match, whether you are 

 Tory, Whig or Radical. If you have a bias in that 

 direction, he has or has heard some thoughts on Bishop 

 Colenzo and the Tractarians. In short, he caters to the 

 humour and disposition of every guest with a happy 

 facility of adaptation ; and the shilling you give him at 

 the end of a day's entertainment has been pretty well 

 earned, if you have availed yourself of all these extra 

 attentions which he is prepared and expecting to give 

 for it. 



The same may be said of the chambermaid. She is 

 not the taciturn invisible that steals in and out of your 

 bed-room and does it up when you are at breakfast or 

 at your out-door business whom you never see, except 

 by sheer accident, as in the American hotel. She is an 

 important and prominent personage in the English inn. 

 She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her 

 prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satis- 

 faction ; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to 

 yourself. No other subordinate official or servant 

 trenches or poaches upon her preserves. She it is who 



