Tips

THACKERAY’S boys are always getting tipped, and no one ever suggests that the practice is reprehensible. The best-born among them is not insulted, and there is no hint that the custom is burdensome or corrupting. And democratic pride has not much altered human nature in this matter. The definition of the tip generally adopted, that it is a gratuity given to an inferior which an equal would not tolerate, is quite inadequate. People who condemn the giving of tips on this understanding do not reflect on the universality of the principle. How many such persons could prove their acquisitions free from the taint of the tip? How much of what we get is fairly earned, how much due to good feeling rather than merit, — not to speak of what has been fairly grasped? Does it vitiate an honorarium to trace a close kinship with the tip? Is the waiter more demeaned by the coin in his palm than the parson by the obvious envelope furtively slipped in his hand by the best man ? Is the physician properly insulted by the gratuities of grateful patients after their bills have been paid? the lawyer by his client’s presents in token of an obligation that no retainer could cover? Is it claimed that a nice sense of honor among college students suffers deterioration because all, from the poorest to the wealthiest, take from their college far more than is paid for? Is it quite true to demand, in the name of lofty self-respect, immunity from other benefit than that of barter or inheritance? Is it more honorable to commercialize the give-and-take of life than to humanize it?

What really vulgarizes the tip is not at all that which with pharisaieal scorn its critic repudiates. It is the obsequiousness which seeks it, the greed which measures it, the snobbishness which displays it. Good breeding is probably more manifest in the giving and receiving of tips than in any other test of the gentleman. When to give, how to give, with what spirit to receive, and what relations to carry forward, —these try men if they be cavaliers. As for my friend the waiter, whatever his calling and station, whether he receives after meat the grace for which no grace before meat can be substitute, or takes my marriage-fee, or lets me show him in any way my measure of fraternity, good-will, affection, obligation, that it. is not susceptible of measure, — I know well how he feels. For what hope is there for me if I be not tipped rather than paid?