My good siror whatever appellation suits your stationon this accursed Boxing Day, when tradition compels even the most exalted households to scatter their servants abroad with a miserly box and a few coins, one is left utterly forsaken, compelled to undertake the basest acts of self-ministration. Picture the unspeakable degradation: I, a gentleman of ancient blood and unassailable refinement, reduced to buttoning my own trousers, securing my own morning coat, andmay the heavens forgive the confessioneven adjusting my monocle without the practised fingers of a valet! I was forced to stoop so low as to tie my own shoes, to brush my own greatcoat, and to set my top hat upon my head with no assuring glance to confirm its impeccable tilt. One feels positively Jacobinnay, a common labourer in a mill, or (heaven preserve us) an American.
And you, maroon barcetta, my sweet guileless creature, dare admit ignorance of a third footman? How adorably, how endearingly proletarian! In any house that pretends to gentilitythat is, one boasting more than a single slatternly maid-of-all-workthe third footman is the humblest of the powdered herd, a creature whose very existence is scarcely registered above stairs. He lugs coal, polishes lamps, removes the emptied decanters once the port has circulated, and performs every other demeaning chore that the first and second footmen would consider an affront to their dignity. One might occasionally glimpse the upper slopes of the housemaids as they bend to their dutiesthe large and spectacularly firm endowments of the parlourmaid, for instance, are a perennial distraction to the younger footmenyet the third footman himself remains as invisible as the dust beneath the carpet. Without his silent drudgery, however, the whole exquisite apparatus of civilised life would collapse into chaos. I do trust this elementary lesson in domestic hierarchy has not overly strained your refreshingly levelling intellect; one would hate to tax sensibilities so charmingly unacquainted with proper distinction.
