shilling a day, like our common labourers, and paid him, as they are
paid, every Saturday night. His livery, mean time, changed at least
_twice a year_, makes him as rich a man as the butler and valet--but
when evening comes, it is the comicallest sight in the world to see them
all go gravely home, and you may die in the night for want of help,
though surrounded by showy attendants all day. Till the hour of
departure, however, it is expected that two or three of them at least
sit in the antichamber, as it is called, to answer the bell, which, if
we confess the truth, is no light service or hardship; for the stairs,
high and wide as those of Windsor palace, all stone too, run up from the
door immediately to that apartment, which is very large, and very cold,
with bricks to set their feet on only, and a brazier filled with warm
wood ashes, to keep their fingers from freezing, which in summer they
employ with cards, and seem but little inclined to lay them down when
ladies pass through to the receiving room. The strange familiarity this
class of people think proper to assume, half joining in the
conversation, and crying _oibò_[Footnote: Oh dear!], when the master
affirms something they do not quite assent to, is apt to shock one at
beginning, the more when one reflects upon the equally offensive
humility they show on being first accepted into the family; when it is
exposed that they receive the new master, or lady's hand, in a half
kneeling posture, and kiss it, as women under the rank of Countess do
the Queen of England's when presented at our court.--This
obsequiousness, however, vanishes completely upon acquaintance, and the
footman, if not very seriously admonished indeed, yawns, spits, and
displays what one of our travel-writers emphatically terms his flag of
abomination behind the chair of a woman of quality, without the
slightest sensation of its impropriety. There is, however, a sort of odd
farcical drollery mingled with this grossness, which tends greatly to
disarm one's wrath; and I felt more inclined to laugh than be angry one