ten considered
derogatory to the dignity of the native born. To do our dirty work that
it disgusts us to do for ourselves, to stand behind our chairs at table,
to obey our whims and caprices, to have never a moment they can call
their own, to keep down their temper when we lose ours, to be compelled
to ask for permission to go out for a walk, seems to me a sad existence
even with good food and wages.

The fact is, my dear CONTINENTAL, that the relation between master and
servant has to be readjusted to suit the times. Indeed it is readjusting
itself. We see the signs, although we may not perceive their
significance. Our life is a dream. I use this venerable saying in
another sense than the one generally intended by it: I mean that we live
half our lives, if not more, in the imagination; and that the
imagination of every-day people is a dream made up of feelings brought
together from the habits, theories, and prejudices of the past of all
lands and all nations of men. The reality that was once in them has long
since been out of them; yet these vague and shadowy fancies are
all-powerful and govern our actions. So that morally we go about like
maskers in the carnival, dressed in the old clothes of our ancestors.
With this difference, that most of us do not see how shabby and
threadbare they are, and how unsuited to our present wants. And the few
who do see this have an inbred fondness for the old romantic rags, and
wear some of them in spite of their better judgment. Our moneyed class
cling in particular to the dream of an aristocracy, and love to look
down upon somebody. The man who made his fortune yesterday calls
to-day's lucky fellow a _nouveau riche_ and a _parvenu_. The counter
jumper who has snatched his thousands from a sudden rise in stocks, is
sure to invest some of his winnings in the tatters of feudalism, sports
a coat of arms on his carriage, has liveries, talks of his honor as a
gentleman, and expects from his servants the same respect that a baron
of the Middle Ages received from his hinds. It is a dream of most
baseless fabric. John and Thomas, with their dislike of the word
servant, their surliness and their impudence, swing too far, perhaps, in
the other direction, but they are more in unison with the spirit of the
age than their masters. I have seen an ardent democrat, who had roared
equal rights from many a stump, furious with the impertinence of a
waiter, whose answer, if it had come from an equal, he