SWEET WILLIAMS AS GOOD AS THEIR MASTERS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 643, 6 March 1879, Page 2

SWEET WILLIAMS AS GOOD AS THEIR MASTERS.

There are waiters and waiters m this | world, and New Zealand can evidently produce the fine undiluted specimen. Says the Thames Advertiser : — " The other day Mr. Sheehan was banquetted. All the world and his wife were there to do him honour, and there were some visitors to whom the accustomed hospitality was extended. Some of these visitors must have been rather astonished at the free and easy style of the waiters at that feed. No doubt many men who consent to throw off their coats at a dinner and "help" the guest's consider that " Jack's as good as his master," if no better. When, however, the waiters are the first to pull out and light up very strong pipes without permission from tlie chairman, and before the guests have been served with the accustomed cigars, the principle of equality is too obviously asserted:' It is not proper either for a speaker to be, slapped on the back (by a waiter) when he is m the' midst of a speech with a ' " Good for you, old fellow," or to have the applause of making some point anticipated with a loud " Well done, Brown ; go it. " These little ebulitions of feeling, however genuine, are trying to one's nerves, and if I had been interrupted as some were by vocal and physical manifestations at I that banquet, I think 1 should have made the atmosphere .of the room decidedly too' warm for Bomebody. Banquets would not be much patronised if wine were excluded, perhaps ; and the speeches would be somewhat flat) which as a rule was not the oase at Mr. Sheehan' s banquet ; but an element of Good Templarism amongst waiters WUI be preeminently desirable if they cannot retain the exuberance of their stimulated verbosity."