figure from their domestic life and surroundings have not
acquired an equal gain through his harsh labors.

To the American eye there is, throughout the length and breadth of
this foreign city, no more notable and striking object than the average
German house-servant. It is not that she has passed my Spion a dozen
times within the last hour,--for here she is messenger, porter, and
commissionnaire, as well as housemaid and cook,--but that she is always
a phenomenon to the American stranger, accustomed to be abused in
his own country by his foreign Irish handmaiden. Her presence is as
refreshing and grateful as the morning light, and as inevitable and
regular. When I add that with the novelty of being well served is
combined the satisfaction of knowing that you have in your household an
intelligent being who reads and writes with fluency, and yet does not
abstract your books, nor criticise your literary composition; who is
cleanly clad, and neat in her person, without the suspicion of having
borrowed her mistress's dresses; who may be good-looking without the
least imputation of coquetry or addition to her followers; who is
obedient without servility, polite without flattery, willing and replete
with supererogatory performance, without the expectation of immediate
pecuniary return, what wonder that the American householder translated
into German life feels himself in a new Eden of domestic possibilities
unrealized in any other country, and begins to believe in a present and
future of domestic happiness! What wonder that the American bachelor
living in German lodgings feels half the terrors of the conjugal future
removed, and rushes madly into love--and housekeeping! What wonder that
I, a long-suffering and patient master, who have been served by the
reticent but too imitative Chinaman; who have been "Massa" to the
childlike but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the
brotherly but uncertain ministrations of the South-Sea Islander, and
have been proudly disregarded by the American aborigine, only in due
time to meet the fate of my countrymen at the hands of Bridget the
Celt,--what wonder that I gladly seize this opportunity to sing the
praises of my German handmaid! Honor to thee, Lenchen, wherever
thou goest! Heaven bless thee in thy walks abroad! whether with that
tightly-booted cavalryman in thy Sunday gown and best, or in blue
polka-dotted apron and bare head as thou trottest nimbly on mine
errands,--erra