156.  In London, or near it, a maid servant cannot be kept at an expense so low as that of thirty pounds a year; for, besides her wages, board and lodging, there must be a fire solely for her; or she must sit with the husband and wife, hear every word that passes between them, and between them and their friends; which will, of course, greatly add to the pleasures of their fire-side!  To keep her tongue still would be impossible, and, indeed, unreasonable; and if, as may frequently happen, she be prettier than the wife, she will know how to give the suitable interpretation to the looks which, to a next to a certainty, she will occasionally get from him, whom, as it were in mockery, she calls by the name of ‘master.’  This is almost downright bigamy; but this can never do; and, therefore, she must have a fire to herself.  Besides the blaze of coals, however, there is another sort of flame that she will inevitably covet.  She will by no means be sparing of the coals; but, well fed and well lodged, as she will be, whatever you may be, she will naturally sigh for the fire of love, for which she carries in her bosom a match always ready prepared.  In plain language, you have a man to keep, a part, at least, of every week; and the leg of lamb, which might have lasted you and your wife for three days, will, by this gentleman’s sighs, be borne away in one.  Shut the door against this intruder; out she goes herself; and, if she go empty-handed, she is no true Christian, or, at least, will not be looked upon as such by the charitable friend at whose house she meets the longing soul, dying partly with love and partly with hunger.

157.  The cost, altogether, is nearer fifty pounds a year than thirty.  How many thousands of tradesmen and clerks, and the like, who might have passed through life without a single embarrassment, have lived in continual trouble and fear, and found a premature grave, from this very cause, and this cause alone!  When I, on my return from America, in 1800, lived a short time in Saint James’s Street, following my habit of early rising, I used to see the servant maids, at almost every house, dispensing charity at the expense of their masters, long before they, good men, opened their eyes, who thus did deeds of benevolence, not only without boasting of them, but without knowing of them.  Meat, bread, cheese, butter, coals, candles; all came with equal freedom from these liberal hands.  I have observed the same, in my early walks and rides, in every part of this great place and its environs.  Where there is one servant it is worse than where there are two or more; for, happily for their employers, they do not always agree.  So that the oppression is most heavy on those who are the least able to bear it:  and particularly on clerk, and such like people, whose wives seem to think, that, because the husband’s work is of a genteel description, they ought to live the life of ladies.  Poor fellows! their work is not hard and rough, to be sure; but, it is work, and work for many hours too, and painful enough; and as to their income, it scarcely exceeds, on an average, the double, at any rate, of that of a journeyman carpenter, bricklayer, or tailor.