Stress of war had not caused these gentry to forget or forgo a single one of the ancient wiles that for half a century their kind has practised upon American tourists and others who didn't care what else they did with their money so long as they were given a chance to spend it for something they didn't particularly want. Yep; those charged with the responsibility of calling up the reserves certainly made a big mistake back yonder in August of 1914. They practised discrimination in the wrong quarter altogether. If any favouritism was to be shown they should have taken the head waiters and left the Apaches at home. Many's the hard battle that I had with these chaps in 1918. It never failed--not one single, solitary time did it fail--that the functionary who took my order first tried to tell me what my order was going to be, and then, after a struggle, reluctantly consented to bring me the things I wanted and insisted on having. Never once did he omit the ceremony of impressing it upon me that he would regard it as a deep favour if only I would be so good as to order a whole lobster. I do not think there was anything personal in this; he recommended the lobster because lobster was the most expensive thing he had in stock. If he could have thought of anything more expensive than lobster he would have recommended that. I always refused--not that I harbour any grudge against lobsters as a class, but because I object to being dictated to by a buccaneer with flat feet, who wears a soiled dickey instead of a shirt, and who is only waiting for a chance to overcharge me or short-change me, or give me bad money, or something. If every other form of provender had failed them the populace of Paris could have subsisted very comfortably for several days on the lobsters I refused to buy in the course of the spring and summer of last year. I'm sure of it. And when I had firmly, emphatically, yea, ofttimes passionately declined the proffered lobster, he, having with difficulty mastered his chagrin, would seek to direct my attention to the salmon, his motive for this change in tactics being that salmon, though apparently plentiful, was generally the second most expensive item upon the regular menu. Salmon as served in Paris wears a different aspect from the one commonly worn by it when it appears upon the table here. Over there they cut the fish through amidships, in cross-sections, and, removing the segment of spinal column, spread the portion flat upon a plate and serve it thus; the result greatly resembling a pair of miniature pink horse collars. A man who knew not the salmon in his native state, or ordering salmon in France, would get the idea that the salmon was bowlegged and that the breast had been sold to some one else, leaving only the hind quarters for him.