Accounts, 
Conclusion, 
44,0 MESS MANAGEMENT. 
For these prices, however, you cannot use much ham, bacon, anchovies 
and other Huropean stores. 
A few words about Mess accounts. Both at home and abroad there 
is a regular system of accounts laid down which has to be adhered to 
and which is simple enough to follow. As to defalcations by Mess 
butlers and Mess sergeants, they are frequent, and I have known of 
many during my term of service, but in every case I can think of, 
those defalcations came from one and the same cause, viz., gross care- 
lessness on the part of the Mess Secretary, and nearly always from the 
custom of giving the butler money to pay bills with and not paying 
direct by cheque. If the Mess Secretary pays every bill by cheque 
and himself enters all monies received and sends the same at once to 
the bank, it is almost impossible that any serious loss can take place. 
In India it is still more simple. A native banker (shroff) keeps the 
Mess account, all payments are made by cheques on him, and his agent 
attends every day at the Mess office to take any cheques or monies and 
to sign receipts in bank-book for the same. No monies need ever 
pass through the hands of the Mess sergeant or butler. All Mess 
servants should be paid monthly in the presence of the Mess Secretary, 
and no orders should be given to tradesmen unless signed by the 
Secretary, who keeps an order-book with counterfoils. 
In concluding these notes, which are more numerous than I had 
intended, although I have gone but skin deep into the subject, I must 
say that a well and nicely organized Mess, with comfortably furnished 
rooms, nice glass and silver, fresh flowers and with good though not 
expensive food and drinks, keeps men together in a wonderful way. 
Many will remember the Hxeter Mess in the ’80’s with Hunt and 
Bethell and that most excellent cook Mrs. Walters (many an entrée 
have we puzzled out together). I have never seen so good a Mess 
before or since, or such a good lot of fellows as were living in it in those 
days. We scarcely ever wanted leave for long, we were so happy. 
At Dorchester and Christchurch I have also been comfortable and 
lived like a gentleman on the best of everything, also Newbridge in 
the days of old Hunter and his wife and again in the Firman period 
was hard to beat in the way of good living. 
In none of these Messes was the price of living very low, though cer- 
tainly for what we got not too high, I never heard any grumbling at the 
expenses and I never knew of anyone ruined by them; but I do know 
that the comfort of the Messes kept us together and helped to make 
us good friends and sociable. If, on the other hand, the Mess is un- 
comfortable and dirty and the food bad even though cheap, as often is 
the case, men are driven out of it and go to London and other places 
more frequently, where they spend more in three days, than the extra 
cost of living well in a really comfortable Mess, would come to in three 
months. I write from experience. 
