reby than
the other. Both have an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The
master and mistress of a house have a right to require respectful
treatment from all whom their roof shelters, but they have no more
right to exact it of servants than of every guest and every child, and
they themselves owe it as much to servants as to guests.

In order that servants may be treated with respect and courtesy, it is
not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the
family table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do
not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that
you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties.
It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere
business character. They never take it as an assumption of superiority
on your part that you do not admit them to relations of private
intimacy. There may be the most perfect respect and esteem and even
friendship between them and you, notwithstanding. So it may be in the
case of servants. It is easy to make any person understand that there
are quite other reasons than the assumption of personal superiority
for not wishing to admit servants to the family privacy. It was not,
in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table, in themselves
considered, that was the thing aimed at by New England girls,--these
were valued only as signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and
consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often in point of fact
declined.

Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers, and in the
atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a
respectable one, let them feel in the mistress of the family the charm
of unvarying consideration and good manners, let their work rooms be
made convenient and comfortable, and their private apartments bear
some reasonable comparison in point of agreeableness to those of other
members of the family, and domestic service will be more frequently
sought by a superior and self-respecting class. There are families in
which such a state of things prevails; and such families, amid the
many causes which unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have
generally been able to keep good permanent servants.

There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run with
regard to servants, which may be mentioned here. They make pets of
them. They give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, and,