from these canons of form is to be depreciated, not so much
because it evinces a shortcoming in mechanical efficiency, or
even that it shows an absence of the servile attitude and
temperament, but because, in the last analysis, it shows the
absence of special training. Special training in personal service
costs time and effort, and where it is obviously present in a
high degree, it argues that the servant who possesses it, neither
is nor has been habitually engaged in any productive occupation.
It is prima facie evidence of a vicarious leisure extending far
back in the past. So that trained service has utility, not only
as gratifying the master's instinctive liking for good and
skilful workmanship and his propensity for conspicuous dominance
over those whose lives are subservient to his own, but it has
utility also as putting in evidence a much larger consumption of
human service than would be shown by the mere present conspicuous
leisure performed by an untrained person. It is a serious
grievance if a gentleman's butler or footman performs his duties
about his master's table or carriage in such unformed style as to
suggest that his habitual occupation may be ploughing or
sheepherding. Such bungling work would imply inability on the
master's part to procure the service of specially trained
servants; that is to say, it would imply inability to pay for the
consumption of time, effort, and instruction required to fit a
trained servant for special service under the exacting code of
forms. If the performance of the servant argues lack of means on
the part of his master, it defeats its chief substantial end; for
the chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the
master's ability to pay.

What has just been said might be taken to imply that the offence