But after the first transition I was changed to another table with another waiter, a tall student from Yale, who joined to a scholarly absence of mind concerning my wants an appreciation of my style of jokes that went far to console me, though I was not sure that it was quite decorous for him to laugh at them when they were addressed to others. I tried to grapple him to me with early and frequent donatives, and he would have been willing enough to stay; but the guests kept going and the helpers were cut off, one by one, till the hour came when we both felt-- “The first slight swerving of the heart That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in too great excess.” The next morning he told me he was going; and as I sauntered down to take the train for a brief flight to New York, I saw him on the platform in citizen’s dress and smoking a cigarette. He was laughing and joking with some of the waiters who still lingered, and bidding them take care of themselves, and promising a like vigilance of his own welfare. After that there was the short interval of a single meal when I was served by a detached waiter, before I was handed over to the kindly helper who next had charge of me. I clung to him anxiously, for I did not know what day or hour I should lose him; I did not know how soon he might lose me! In the passing of the head porter there was something deeply dramatic, almost tragic for me. We had become acquaintances, friends, even, I hope, and I had become sensible of the gradual disappearance of his subordinates until they were reduced to what I may call the tail porter in contradistinction to the head porter. Then the head porter said that he had a great mind to be going himself; but when I asked him why, he could not well say, and he agreed with me that it might be better for him to stay. We counted up the remaining families together, and found them twenty, and I convinced him that by the most modest computation here were twenty dollars in fees before him. I thought that I had secured his allegiance to the end, but the very morning before the pensive record of these events I went to look for him in his accustomed place to get my shoes “shined,” and he was not there. The barber was there, looking in a vague disoccupation across the marshes to the northward of the hotel, and I asked him where the porter was. He closed his eyes that he might open his lips more impressively, and breathed the word, “Andato.” “Gone?” I echoed.