ople complain of the wane of civility among
country people when they went to them in the summer to get the good of
their country air. They say that the natives no longer salute them in
meeting, but we never heard that this happened when they first saluted
the natives. Try passing the time of day with the next farmer you meet
on a load of wood, and you will find that the old-fashioned civility is
still to be had for the asking. But it won't be offered without the
asking; the American who thinks from your dress and address that you
don't regard him as an equal will not treat you as one at the risk of a
snub; and he is right. As for domestics--or servants, as we insolently
call them--their manners are formed on their masters', and are often
very bad. But they are not always bad. We, too, have had that fancy of
yours for saying good-morning when we come down; it doesn't always work,
but it oftener works than not. A friend of ours has tried some such
civility at others' houses: at his host's house when the door was opened
to him, arriving for dinner, and he was gloomily offered a tiny envelope
with the name of the lady he was to take out. At first it surprised, but
when it was imagined to be well meant it was apparently liked; in
extreme cases it led to note of the weather; the second or third time at
the same house it established something that would have passed, with the
hopeful spectator, for a human relation. Of course, you can't carry this
sort of thing too far. You can be kind, but you must not give the notion
that you do not know your place."

"Ah! You draw the line," our friend exulted. "I thought so. But where?"

"At the point where you might have the impression that you respected
butlers, when you merely loved your fellow-men. You see the difference?"

"But isn't loving your fellow-men enough? Why should you respect
butlers?"

"To be sure. But come to think of it, why shouldn't you? What is it in
domestic employ that degrades, that makes us stigmatize it as 'service'?
As soon as you get out-of-doors the case changes. You must often have
seen ladies fearfully snubbed by their coachmen; and as for chauffeurs,
who may kill you or somebody else at any moment, the mental attitude of
the average automobilaire toward them must be one of abject deference.
But there have been some really heroic, some almost seraphic, efforts to
readjust the terms of a relation that seems to have something
essentially odious in it. In the