Both in Pinturrichio's and Botticelli's pictures, the costume, the manner of carrying the dishes, and the stately rhythmic walk of the waiters is particularly noticeable, and on this point I would refer the curious to Francesco Colonna's "Hypnerotomachia," first published in 1499, where there is a most minute account of a feast given in the palace of Queen Elentherilide. At this feast, where, with the exception of Poliphilo, only the queen and her maidens are present, the guests are seated on one side of the tables only, exactly as we see in Botticelli's picture above noted on benches placed along the walls. The manner of carrying the dishes and napkins is described exactly, and corresponds in all points with the attitudes and bearing of the waiters in the two pictures in question. The sumptuousness of this feast surpasses everything that has ever been seen or imagined. I have space only to note one or two details. Each guest was waited upon by three maidens dressed in magnificent garments of the same color as the table-cloth; with each course, the table-cloth and the flowers were changed, and the attendant maidens' garments likewise; the table-cloths were of silk or satin, and of sea-green, rose, amethyst, and other colors, successively.

The art and the literature of the past would furnish many other proofs of the refinement of our ancestors in their table-service, but perhaps the above-mentioned instances will suffice to suggest to some hosts the idea of rebelling against too rigid traditions. Our modern system of alternating men and women at table, side by side, is an ancient one also, but the plan noticed by Benvenuto Cellini might be tried occasionally, and it would be a very refined fancy to arrange a background especially to set off the beauty of a bevy of fair ladies arranged at table in a group, for their own pleasure, of course, but also for the delectation of the eyes of the men. As regards the guests being seated on one side of the table only, and being served from the front and not from the back, I consider this reform, or rather this return to the practices of the past, to be very desirable.

The necessity of having waiters at table is regrettable. Male waiters are often, if not generally, dreadful phenomena. There is nothing more shocking to the gourmet than the vision of the waiter's abominable thumb grasping the rim of a plate and threatening at every moment to come into contact with the soup or the meat that he is passing. Even when this thumb is veiled in a spotless white cotton glove, it still remains objectionable; on this point, I agree with the painter W. P. Frith, who says in one chapter of his "Reminiscences:" "I think if I were ever so rich, I should as much as possible avoid men-servants; not that I have a word to say against a highly respectable portion of the community, but being, like the Vicar of Wakefield, an admirer of happy faces, I am also an admirer of pretty ones, only they must be of the female order."

The delicate gourmets of the eighteenth century devoted much ingenuity to solving the problem of waiting at table, and several of them invented costly apparatus for raising and lowering the table through the floor already served. Grimod de la Reyniere was the sworn enemy of servants, and the dream of his life was to discover some machine to replace those human machines which have always too many eyes and too many ears, and render all expansiveness impossible or imprudent. In 1728 the Margravine of Bayreuth speaks in her curious memoirs of a table de confiance which was worked by means of pulleys. "No servants are needed," she says; "they are replaced by drums placed at the side of the guests, who write what they want on a tablet; the drums descend into the kitchen, and ascend again with the objects required." Forty years later, Loriot, an ingenious man who had discovered a means of fixing pastel, invented for Marie Antoinette's service, at Trianon, a table far superior to the Margravine's system of lifts. It was a table which rose through the floor, all served, and accompanied by four little tables, or dumb-waiters, on which were placed the various utensils necessary. A similar arrangement is described in Bastide's "La Petite Maison," already mentioned.