n
cook a good dinner is quite as important to society as the man who
makes the table on which it is served.

Yet, whether mistresses will recognize the change or not, service has
in a great measure emancipated itself from feudal bonds. Servants have
now a social world of their own, of which their mistresses know
nothing at all. In it they meet their equals, make their friends, and
talk as they desire. Without unions, without speeches, and without
striking,--because they can get what they want without striking,--they
have raised their wages, shortened their hours, and obtained many
privileges. And the natural result is an independence--which for lack
of proper expression asserts itself by the impertinence and
self-conceit of ignorance--that has won more in tangible rights than
in intangible respect.

Mistresses who have memories or traditions are shocked because
servants do not acknowledge their superiority, or in any way
reverence their "betters." But reverence for any earthly thing is the
most un-American of attitudes. Reverence is out of date and
offensively opposed to free inquiry. Parents do not exact it, and
preachers do not expect it,--the very title of "Rev." is now a verbal
antiquity. Do we not even put our rulers through a course of
hand-shaking in order to divest them of any respect the office might
bring? Why, then, expect a virtue from servants which we do not
practise in our own stations?

It is said, truly enough, that servants think of nothing but dress.
Alas, mistresses are in the same transgression! This is the fault of
machinery. When servants wore mob-caps and ginghams, mistresses wore
muslins and merinos, and were passing fine with one good silk dress.
Machinery has made it possible for mistresses to get lots of dresses,
and if servants are now fine and tawdry, it is because there is a
general leaning that way. Servants were neat when every one else was
neat.

To blame servants for faults we all share is really not reasonable. It
must be remembered that women of all classes dress to make themselves
attractive, and attractive mainly to the opposite sex. What the young
ladies in the parlor do to make themselves beautiful to their lovers,
the servants in the kitchen imitate. Both classes of young women are
anxious to marry. There is no harm in this desire in either case. With
the hopes of the young ladies we do not meddle; why then interfere
about nurse and the policeman? service is not an elysium