one's own sustenance and shelter.

I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true
position of a servant under our democratic institutions that domestic
service is so shunned and avoided in America, that it is the very last
thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living. It is
more the want of personal respect toward those in that position than the
labors incident to it which repels our people from it. Many would be
willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to place
themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly wounded by
_the implication of an inferiority which does not follow any other kind
of labor or service in this country but that of the family_.

There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of
superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance
which democracy inspires in the working-class. Many families think of
servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all
that allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek in
every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as
possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious
ones,--and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in
the house. Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their
domestics with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent; but
there is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the
position. That they treat their servants with so much consideration
seems to them a merit entitling them to the most prostrate gratitude;
and they are constantly disappointed and shocked at that want of sense
of inferiority on the part of these people which leads them to
appropriate pleasant rooms, good furniture, and good living as mere
matters of common justice.

It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that servants
should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladies who
yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures, if
they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening, seem
astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more
disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in
the kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The pretty
chambermaid's anxieties about her dress, the time she spends at her
small and not very clear mirror, are sneeringly noticed by