and I assure you, if I were to make a Register of all the Horses I have known thus abused by Negligence of Servants, the Number would mount a Regiment.  I wish you would give us your Observations, that we may know how to treat these Rogues, or that we Masters may enter into Measures to reform them.  Pray give us a Speculation in general about Servants, and you make me

  Pray do not omit the Mention
  of Grooms in particular.

  Yours,

  Philo-Britannicus

This honest Gentleman, who is so desirous that I should write a Satyr upon Grooms, has a great deal of Reason for his Resentment; and I know no Evil which touches all Mankind so much as this of the Misbehaviour of Servants.

The Complaint of this Letter runs wholly upon Men-Servants; and I can attribute the Licentiousness which has at present prevailed among them, to nothing but what an hundred before me have ascribed it to, The Custom of giving Board-Wages:  This one Instance of false Oeconomy is sufficient to debauch the whole Nation of Servants, and makes them as it were but for some part of their Time in that Quality.  They are either attending in Places where they meet and run into Clubs, or else, if they wait at Taverns, they eat after their Masters, and reserve their Wages for other Occasions.  From hence it arises, that they are but in a lower Degree what their Masters themselves are; and usually affect an Imitation of their Manners:  And you have in Liveries, Beaux, Fops, and Coxcombs, in as high Perfection as among People that keep Equipages.  It is a common Humour among the Retinue of People of Quality, when they are in their Revels, that is when they are out of their Masters Sight, to assume in a humourous Way the Names and Titles of those whose Liveries they wear.  By which means Characters and Distinctions become so familiar to them, that it is to this, among other Causes, one may impute a certain Insolence among our Servants, that they take no Notice of any Gentleman though they know him ever so well, except he is an Acquaintance of their Master’s.

My Obscurity and Taciturnity leave me at Liberty, without Scandal, to dine, if I think fit, at a common Ordinary, in the meanest as well as the most sumptuous House of Entertainment.  Falling in the other Day at a Victualling-House near the House of Peers, I heard the Maid come down and tell the Landlady at the Bar, That my Lord Bishop swore he would throw her out [at [1]] Window, if she did not bring up more Mild Beer, and that my Lord Duke would have a double Mug of Purle.  My Surprize was encreased, in hearing loud and rustick Voices speak and answer to each other upon the publick Affairs, by the Names of the most Illustrious of our Nobility; till of a sudden one came running in, and cry’d the House was rising.  Down came all the Company together, and away!  The Alehouse was immediately filled with Clamour, and scoring one Mug to the Marquis of such a Place,