•Tippoo

Baib, the Sultan of Mysore, was born in 1749, give, and how much are you to give? Well, Americans have done something to spoil the market. They almost always give more than the English. I have known a sovereign given for a Saturday to Monday visit. An English man would give halt a crown or five shillings. A young guardsman who, unlike most guardsmen, is not rich, once told me that he gave two shillings for the first night, and at the rate of a shilling a night after the first, but never more than half a sovereign. " I don’t mind giving them odd sums," he added. Another friend of much experience laid down the general rule that you give in proportion to your means, and that servants understand this. Whether they understand it or not is hardly to the point. If you try to adjust your gifts to the expectation of those who are to receive them, you will find it extremely expensive, and you will neverthele fail in the end. It used to be, and to some extent still is, the custom to give to the butler or to the groom of the chambers—po ibly to both. " I long since set my face against it,’’ was the answer of an English man who visits constantly, and knows his way about as well as anybody. If you give, it will be accepted—you need have no fear on that point. Almost anything would be accepted. I have seen a man of rank hand a butler, at the end of a long stav, half a crown, and the half-crown remained in the butler’s hand. Something depends on the frequency of your visits at the same house, and on whether a particular servant has done anything for you out of the nature of his service. If you have given trouble with telegrams and letters, you would naturally give a tip, and this would be to the groom of the chambers if there was one; if not, to the butler. as in other things, must keep his eyes open. He may always ask—not, of course, his host, who is supposed to be unaware of these things, but of his fellow guests. You may hear it discu ed with freedom in the smoking-room, and all sorts of opinions expre ed. There is, or was, in some houses a box in which guests are invited to deposit such large as they choose to bestow on the domestics of the household. The contents of the box are divided among them according to some rule agreed on among themselves. But this I relate on hearsay evidence. 1 1 is unusual, and it involves the host in the matter in a way which few hosts like. more numerous, but the matter of gifts to housemaids and women servants in general is one with which only the feminine mind is competent to grapple. Hero again, who however, it is safe to say that English ladies, that American ladies, whether they take a maid; with them or not, give too much. An American lady has been heard to declare that a Saturday to Monday visit in the country at a great house cost her a five pound note in fees. What she did with her five pound note pa es conjecture. Nor does it signify whether the house be great or small, except that the more servants the more numerous may be the opportunities of giving. No claims are made.