Quite a staff--and it does not include Madame’s private secretary, an American, a “gentlewoman,” thoroughly converted to the English system, or Mademoiselle’s visiting governess, a product of ten years’ training in a New York private school for the “young ladies of the upper class,” or extra servants of all kinds that are constantly coming and going. The total monthly pay-roll is never below one thousand seven hundred dollars; often, in the height of the winter season in New York or of the summer season at Newport, it climbs up to two thousand dollars. And, putting the feeding of all these people at twenty dollars apiece a month, which is exceedingly, ridiculously low, the board-bill would be more than eight hundred dollars a month. Then, naturally, all of them are as careless and as wasteful as they dare to be, and, wherever possible, corrupt in the taking of commissions from the “tradespeople.” This means a squandering of more than their wages and board together. But it is indeed a most “modest” establishment--there are at least a thousand in this country far more imposing. Why, our hero has not even provided servants for the servants of his servants! And, as everybody knows, that is always done in a really bang-up, swell, first-class establishment. Also, his liveries, although what the “tradespeople” would call elegant, are not nearly so sumptuous as those of the neighboring establishments. But, dissatisfied though the servants are, they do their best to keep up appearances and they fight strenuously for the caste system. They are, roughly speaking, divided into five ranks. At the top stand the private secretary, the visiting governess, and the housekeeper. They are almost “gentlefolk”; in fact, they are gentlefolk in abeyance, as it were, like cadets of a royal house which has been kicked out by its unfeeling subjects. Next come butler and coachman and chef. Each admits the right of the other two to high rank, but each feels toward the others as they fancy a marquis must feel toward an earl. Below these high haughtinesses is the main body of servants, with the lowest rank made up of stablemen, scullions, servants’ servants. Each servant fiercely insists upon his own station, and still more fiercely insists upon the lower station of those whom the code of caste has assigned there. And all the servants insist upon the aristocratic principle being enforced from top to bottom of the household. The “master” and his wife, the boy and the girl, know that if they for an instant drop the pose they will be the butt of ridicule and contempt in the servants’ hall.