other's old-fashioned notions, and how shrewd and
sensible she is in spite of them,--mother says that when she was a
girl families used to import young men and young women from the country
towns, who called themselves "helps," not servants,--no, that was
Scriptural; "but they did n't know everything down in Judee," and it is
not good American language. She says that these people would live in the
same household until they were married, and the women often remain in
the same service until they died or were old and worn out, and then,
what with the money they had saved and the care and assistance they got
from their former employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old
age, and be buried in the family lot. Mother has made up her mind to the
change, but grandmother is bitter about it. She says there never was
a country yet where the population was made up of "ladies" and
"gentlemen," and she does n't believe there can be; nor that putting a
spread eagle on a copper makes a gold dollar of it. She is a pessimist
after her own fashion. She thinks all sentiment is dying out of our
people. No loyalty for the sovereign, the king-post of the political
edifice, she says; no deep attachment between employer and employed; no
reverence of the humbler members of a household for its heads; and to
make sure of continued corruption and misery, what she calls "universal
suffrage" emptying all the sewers into the great aqueduct we all must
drink from. "Universal suffrage!" I suppose we women don't belong to the
universe! Wait until we get a chance at the ballot-box, I tell grandma,
and see if we don't wash out the sewers before they reach the aqueduct!
But my pen has run away with men I was thinking of Paolo, and what a
pleasant thing it is to have one of those child-like, warm-hearted,
attachable, cheerful, contented, humble, faithful, companionable, but
never presuming grownup children of the South waiting on one, as if
everything he could do for one was a pleasure, and carrying a look of
content in his face which makes every one who meets him happier for a
glimpse of his features.

It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and servant,
intelligent authority and cheerful obedience, mutual interest in each
other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the advantages which belong
to domestic service in the better class of families, should be almost
wholly confined to aliens and their immediate descendants. Why should
Han