It is a common thing to hear the remark expressed by much-tried mistresses that servants are not ‘reasonable beings.’  The observation may either have been provoked by the misbehaviour of some particular domestic, or by the injudicious defence of the class by one of the male sex.  For the gentlemen have more to urge in favour of our domestics than the ladies have, and, as the latter maintain, for a very obvious reason—­’they have much less to do with them.’  The statement is cynical, but correct.  So long as a man finds his clothes brushed and his meals well and punctually cooked, he ’does not see much to complain of,’ nor does he give much thought to the pains and trouble which even that moderate amount of service entails upon his wife.  Unless in great households, where everything is delegated to a paid housekeeper, it is, indeed, certain that ladies who are resolved to keep a house as it should be have, now, from various causes, a very hard time of it.  The old feeling of feudal service, though a few examples—­both mistresses and servants—­may still exist of it, is dead; and in its place we have the employer and the hireling.  There are faults, of course, on both sides; mistresses are accustomed to look upon their servants too much as machines, and in the working thereof do not, perhaps, estimate sufficiently the advantages of the use of sweet oil; while servants are more prone to ‘eye-service’ than were ever the housemaids of Ephesus.  Which of the two began it I cannot tell, but a certain antagonism has grown up between these two classes which shakes the pillars of domestic peace.  At the root of it all, as at the root of most evils, lies ignorance, and in the servants’ case ignorance of a stupendous nature.

I have had in my household an under-nurse, who, upon the family’s leaving town for a short holiday, was enjoined to see that the birds in the nursery (canaries) were well supplied with sand.  When we came back we found them all starved to death.  She had given them sand, but, alas! no seed.  This was a girl from the country, who, one would think, would have known what birds fed upon; otherwise one does not expect much intelligence from Arcadia.  When our last importation (an under-housemaid) ‘turned on the gas’ in the upper apartments as she was directed to do, but omitted to light it, I thought it very excusable; she had not been accustomed to gas.  On the other hand, when her mistress told her to ‘look to the fire’ of a certain room, I contend we had a right to expect that that fire should be kept in.  It was not so, however, and when the lady inquired, ’Why did you not look to it, as I told you?’ the girl replied, ’Well, I did, mum; the door was open and I looked at the fire every time I passed.’  She appeared to attach some sort of igneous power to the human eye.

Each of these young ladies came to us very highly recommended by the wife of the clergyman of her native place.  Surely, in the curriculum of the village school, something else beside the catechism ought to have been included; yet, of the things they were certain to be set to do—­the merest first principles of domestic service—­they had been taught nothing; and in learning them at our expense they cost us ten times their wages.