d seem as if aristocratic drilling had done them
good. In a few months they become brawling, impertinent, grasping,
want high wages, and are very unwilling to work. I went to several
intelligence-offices the other day to look for a girl for Marianne,
and I thought, by the way the candidates catechized the ladies, and
the airs they took upon them, that they considered themselves the
future mistresses interrogating their subordinates.

"'Does ye expect me to do the washin' with the cookin'?'

"'Yes.'

"'Thin I'll niver go to that place!'

"'And does ye expect me to get the early breakfast for yer husband to
be off in the train every mornin'?'

"'Yes.'

"'I niver does that,--that ought to be a second girl's work.'

"'How many servants does ye keep, ma'am?'

"'Two.'

"'I niver lives with people that keeps but two servants.'

"'How many has ye in yer family?'

"'Seven.'

"'That's too large a family. Has ye much company?'

"'Yes, we have company occasionally.'

"'Thin I can't come to ye; it'll be too harrd a place.'

"In fact, the thing they were all in quest of seemed to be a very
small family, with very high wages, and many perquisites and
privileges.

"This is the kind of work-people our manners and institutions make of
people that come over here. I remember one day seeing a coachman touch
his cap to his mistress when she spoke to him, as is the way in
Europe, and hearing one or two others saying among themselves,--

"'That chap's a greenie; he'll get over that soon.'"

"All these things show," said I, "that the staff of power has
passed from the hands of gentility into those of labor. We may think
the working classes somewhat unseemly in their assertion of
self-importance; but, after all, are they, considering their inferior
advantages of breeding, any more overbearing and impertinent than the
upper classes have always been to them in all ages and countries?

"When Biddy looks long, hedges in her work with many conditions, and
is careful to get the most she can for the least labor, is she, after
all, doing any more than you or I or all the rest of the world? I
myself will not write articles for five dollars a page, when there are
those who will give me fifteen. I would not do double duty as an
editor on a salary of seven thousand, when I could get ten thousand
for less work.

"Biddy and her mistress are two human beings, with the same human
wants. Both want to escape trouble, to make their life