“Every English man-servant is apt to consider himself a specialist.... This want of elasticity has led to his gradual disappearance from all except the most wealthy households.”—Booth, VIII., 227. In Italy cooks are very generally men. In France nearly all domestic work in the provincial hotels is performed by men. In Germany waiters are, as a rule, men. [345] This competition is not wholly unknown. In a pension in Athens the second waiter, a Greek, left because unwilling to take orders from an Armenian head waiter. French servants sometimes go to the French cantons of Switzerland, and the reverse. The same is true of German and Italian servants who are found in the German and the Italian cantons. But the permanent migration of servants from one country to another, especially on the continent, is very slight. The reason usually given is, “They do not understand the ways of another country and are unhappy in it.” [346] “Not only will the foreigner work for less wages, but he is better educated and more thoroughly trained. Whilst in this country a waiter’s duties are ‘picked up’ in an irregular way, in Germany or Switzerland the work is properly taught by a regular system of apprenticeship. The knowledge of continental language which the foreigner possesses is found useful, and he has, moreover, a higher reputation than our own countrymen for neatness and civility.”—Booth, VIII., 235. [347] English, French, and German are universally spoken by waiters in all the large hotels and pensions on the continent. Two or three other languages in addition are often found. One waiter in a very primitive hotel in Olympia, Greece, spoke eight. This can scarcely be considered exceptional. “The waiting staff of the great modern hotels consists mainly of foreigners.”—Booth, VIII., 231-232. [348] In certain quarters of London the boarding-houses are full of waiters who have come over from the continent to learn English. Many waiters not French by birth took advantage of the Exposition in 1900 to improve their French by going to Paris at that time. It is not unusual for travellers to be asked concerning possible openings in hotels and pensions where waiters would have an opportunity of learning a new language.