Our servants are usually willing workers; they do not ask, nor would they indeed dream of asking, for free Sundays. They toil from day to day, week in week out, month after month, without a murmur at being put to incessant work. Like the clerks and apprentices in mercantile houses, they have by immemorial custom two holidays a year, on the sixteenth of January and July; but as in busy families they cannot all be spared at the same time, they are often given some other days in turn. Those who have homes in town pass the day with their families; but others from the country, that is, a majority of domestic servants, spend their holiday wandering aimlessly about the streets and parks in gaping wonder at the sights of the city. The servants are, moreover, expected to work without intermission from morning till night. In some families a fixed time is given them daily for rest; but in most houses no such hour is set apart and they snatch what rest they can in the intervals of their work. They get up early in the morning, about five or half-past; but as those from the country are used to early rising, it is no hardship to them. It is the late hours that they succumb to. Where the master has a large social connection, is given to entertaining friends, or is found of cards, chequers, or other games, the house is often kept open till midnight or later. In such cases, however, the cook and others who have to rise early to prepare the breakfast, are allowed to go to bed at ten or thereabouts; but the servant who waits on the guests and brings them tea or wine has to sit up till they leave. It would also be a breach of hospitality for the family to go to bed and leave the host alone to entertain his guests; and so, with the exception of the children, the rest of the family wait patiently till the last guest departs. Indeed, the drowsy servants often resort, as a charm for expediting the lingering guest’s departure, to burning a pinch of moxa on his clogs or setting up a broomstick on its handle.