howy, impudent, and independent. The last charge is emphatically
true, and it accounts for and includes the others. But then this
independence is the necessary result of the world's progress, in which
all classes share. Steam has made it easy for families to travel, who,
without cheap locomotion, would never go one hundred miles from home.
It has also made it easy for servants to go from city to city. When
wages are low and service is plenty in one place, a few dollars will
carry them to where they are in request.

Fifty years ago very few servants read, or cared to read. They are now
the best patrons of a certain class of newspapers; they see the "Want
columns" as well as other people; and they are quite capable of
appreciating the lessons they teach and the advantages they offer. The
national increase of wealth has also affected the position of
servants. People keep more servants than they used to keep; and
servants have less work to do. People live better than they used to
live, and servants, as well as others, feel the mental uplifting that
comes from rich and plentiful food.

But one of the main causes of trouble is that a mistress even yet
hires her servant with some ancient ideas about her inferiority. She
forgets that servants read novels, and do fancy work, and write lots
of letters; and that service can no longer be considered the humble
labor of a lower for a superior being. Mistresses must now dismiss
from their minds the idea of the old family servant they have learned
to meet in novels; they must cease to look upon service as in any way
a family tie; they must realize and practically acknowledge the fact
that the relation between mistress and servant is now on a purely
commercial basis,--the modern servant being a person who takes a
certain sum of money for the performance of certain duties. Indeed the
condition has undergone just the same change as that which has taken
place in the relation between the manufacturer and his artisans, or
between the contractor and his carpenters and masons.

It is true enough that servants take the money and do not perform
the duties, or else perform them very badly. The manufacturer,
the contractor, the merchant, all make the same complaint; for
independence and social freedom always step _before_ fitness for
these conditions, because the condition is necessary for the
results, and the results are not the product of one generation.
Surely Americans may bear their domest