of Americans in
families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in
favor of a higher class; but even the foreign population became more
or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this
country with vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant
and uncultivated people such ideas are often more unreasonable for
being vague. They did not, indeed, claim a seat at the table and in
the parlor, but they repudiated many of those habits of respect and
courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and asserted their
own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed
to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of
domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who secretly
confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the air and
bearing of authority, and the employed, who knew their power and
insisted on their privileges. From this cause domestic service in
America has had less of mutual kindliness than in old countries. Its
terms have been so ill understood and defined that both parties have
assumed the defensive; and a common topic of conversation in American
female society has often been the general servile war which in one
form or another was going on in their different families,--a war as
interminable as would be a struggle between aristocracy and common
people, undefined by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore
opening fields for endless disputes. In England, the class who go to
service _are_ a class, and service is a profession; the distance
between them and their employers is so marked and defined, and all the
customs and requirements of the position are so perfectly understood,
that the master or mistress has no fear of being compromised by
condescension, and no need of the external voice or air of authority.
The higher up in the social scale one goes, the more courteous seems
to become the intercourse of master and servant; the more perfect and
real the power, the more is it veiled in outward expression,--commands
are phrased as requests, and gentleness of voice and manner covers an
authority which no one would think of offending without trembling.

But in America all is undefined. In the first place, there is no class
who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in. It
is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher;
your best servants always have something else in view as so