The Italian _camerière_, or waiter, takes a pride in his profession--as far as he knows it, and quite loses sight of its commercial possibilities in the technicalities of his craft, and his seeming desire only to please. _Subito momento_ is his ever ready phrase, though often it seems as though he might have replied _never_.
Seated in some roadside or seashore _trattoria_ one pounds on the bare table for the _camerière_, orders another "Torino," pays his reckoning and is off again. Nothing extraordinarily amusing has happened the while, but the mere lolling about on a terrace of a café overlooking the lapping Mediterranean waves at one's feet is one of the things that one comes to Italy for, and one is content for the nonce never to recur to palazzos, villas, cathedrals, or picture galleries. There have been too many travellers in past times--and they exist to-day--who do not seek to fill the gaps between a round of churches and art galleries, save to rush back to some palace hotel and eat the same kind of a dinner that they would in London, Paris or New York--a little worse cooked and served to be sure. It's the country and its people that impress one most in a land not his own. Why do so many omit these "attractions?"
The _buona mano_ is everywhere in evidence in Italy, but the Italian himself seems to understand how to handle the question better than strangers. The Italian guest at a hotel is fairly lavish with the quantity of his tips, but each is minute, and for a small service he pays a small fee. We who like to impress the waiter--for we all do, though we fancy we don't--will often pay as much to a waiter for bringing us a drink as the price of the drink. Not so the Italian; and that's the difference.
Ten per cent, on the bill at a hotel is always a lavish fee, and five would be ample, though now and again the head waiter may look askance at his share. Follow the Italian's own system then, give everybody who serves you something, however little, and give to those only, and then their little jealousies between each other will take the odium off you--if you really care what a waiter thinks about you anyway, which of course you shouldn't.
These little disbursements are everywhere present in Italy. One pays a franc to enter a museum, a picture gallery or a great library, and one tips his cabman as he does elsewhere, and a dozen francs spent in riding about on Venetian gondolas for a day incurs the implied liability for another two francs as well.