ir employer and the
visiting celebrity came into the milk-room, and so, unless they were
civilly recognized--we don't say they weren't in this case--they thought
they would do some of the ignoring, too. It is surprising how much the
superiors think they ought to get for their money from the inferiors in
that commercial transaction. For instance, they think they buy the right
to call their inferiors by their first names, but they don't think they
sell a similar right with regard to themselves. They call them Mary and
John, but they would be surprised and hurt if the butler and waitress
addressed them as Mary and John. Yet there is no _reason_ for their
surprise. Do you remember in that entrancing and edifying comedy of
'Arms and the Man'--Mr. Bernard Shaw's very best, as we think--the wild
Bulgarian maid calls the daughter of the house by her Christian name?
'But you mustn't do that,' the mother of the house instructs her. 'Why
not?' the girl demands. '_She calls me Louka._'"

"Capital!" our friend agreed. "But, of course, Shaw doesn't mean it."

"You never can tell whether he means a thing or not. We think he meant
in this case, as Ibsen means in all cases, that you shall look where you
stand."

Our satirist seemed to have lost something of his gayety. "Aren't you
taking the matter a little too seriously?"

"Perhaps. But we thought you wanted us to be more serious than we were
about addressing letters properly. This is the larger-sized morality,
the real No. 11 sort, and you don't like it, though you said you
expected it of us."

"Oh, but I do like it, though just at present I hadn't expected it. But
if you're in earnest you must admit that the lower classes with us are
abominably rude. Now, I have the fancy--perhaps from living on the
Continent a good deal in early life, where I formed the habit--of saying
good-morning to the maid or the butler when I come down. But they never
seem to like it, and I can't get a good-morning back unless I dig it out
of them. I don't want them to treat me as a superior; I only ask to be
treated as an equal."

"We have heard something like that before, but we doubt it. What you
really want is to have your condescension recognized; they _feel_ that,
if they don't _know_ it. Besides, their manners have been formed by
people who don't ask good-morning from them; they are so used to being
treated as if they were not there that they cannot realize they _are_
there. We have heard city pe