[368] The living accommodations provided for employees seemed to me everywhere distinctly inferior to those provided in America. In London, “as far as possible the men are lodged in the basement, while the women have their rooms at the top of the house. This arrangement, though always desirable, often necessitates two or even three men using the servants’ hall as their bedroom, while another sleeps in the pantry, and another beneath the stairs. Breathing space is restricted and the want of air, and high living, coupled with the absence of hard work or exercise, lead naturally to a demand for some form of stimulant, with the result that numbers of men-servants ultimately take to drink.”—Booth, VIII., 228-229. The sleeping rooms given servants are small and cheerless, hot in summer and cold in winter, while often the only place provided for taking meals is a corner of the kitchen table. [369] Bouniceau-Gesmon finds a fundamental difference between slavery and domestic service, as indeed there is, and denies that one is the outgrowth of the other, since the two have sometimes existed side by side. _Domestiques et Maîtres_, chap. I. But while the one is bond and the other free, and while the labor performed in both states is the same and should be honorable, the fact remains that the domestic servant has inherited to a great degree the social opprobrium that attached to the slave and the serf. [370] Gil Blas, Figaro, and Lafleur have long stood as types of the eighteenth century valet. Walter Scott says of the former, “as to respect, it is the last thing which he asks at his reader’s hand.” [_Biographical Memoir of Le Sage._] Both Dean Swift and Daniel DeFoe sharpened their pens with infinite pains in describing the servants of their times. At a later date the pencil of Cruikshank found employment in illustrating Mayhew’s _Greatest Plague in Life_, while _Punch_ for years revelled in the opportunities afforded by “servant-gallism.” Babeau, Bouniceau-Gesmon, and Salomon show similar conditions in France. “Stealing is an infamous thing—it is the sin of a lackey,” remarks a priest to a pupil who confessed a theft. Cited by Babeau, p. 290. “To lie like a lackey” is almost proverbial. [371] There are indeed many illustrations of servants of an altogether different character—Caleb in _The Bride of Lammermoor_ and Marcel in _The Huguenots_ are types of the faithful servitor who alike in prosperity and in adversity remains constant to the family in whose service he was born. The fact remains, however, that the servant exists as a type in European literature as he does not in that of America. [372] _La Nouvelle Revue_, February 1, 1886.