caste. Menial service is an anachronism,--the
refuse of mediaeval barbarism. Whey, then, does it linger? Why are we
silent about it? Why in the minds of so many decent and up-seeing folks
does the whole Negro problem resolve itself into the matter of their
getting a cook or a maid?

No one knows better than I the capabilities of a system of domestic
service at its best. I have seen children who were spiritual sons and
daughters of their masters, girls who were friends of their mistresses,
and old servants honored and revered. But in every such case the Servant
had transcended the Menial, the Service had been exalted above the Wage.
Now to accomplish this permanently and universally, calls for the same
revolution in household help as in factory help and public service.
While organized industry has been slowly making its help into
self-respecting, well-paid men, and while public service is beginning to
call for the highest types of educated and efficient thinkers, domestic
service lags behind and insists upon seeking to evolve the best types of
men from the worst conditions.

The cause of this perversity, to my mind, is twofold. First, the ancient
high estate of Service, now pitifully fallen, yet gasping for breath;
secondly, the present low estate of the outcasts of the world, peering
with blood-shot eyes at the gates of the industrial heaven.

The Master spoke no greater word than that which said: "Whosoever will
be great among you, let him be your servant!" What is greater than
Personal Service! Surely no social service, no wholesale helping of
masses of men can exist which does not find its effectiveness and beauty
in the personal aid of man to man. It is the purest and holiest of
duties. Some mighty glimmer of this truth survived in those who made the
First Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, the Keepers of the Robes, and the
Knights of the Bath, the highest nobility that hedged an anointed king.
Nor does it differ today in what the mother does for the child or the
daughter for the mother, in all the personal attentions in the
old-fashioned home; this is Service! Think of what Friend has meant, not
simply in spiritual sympathies, but in physical helpfulness. In the
world today what calls for more of love, sympathy, learning, sacrifice,
and long-suffering than the care of children, the preparation of food,
the cleansing and ordering of the home, personal attendance and
companionship, the care of bodies and their raiment--w