Memoir of Mary L. Ware, Wife of Henry Ware, Jr.Hall, Edward B. (Edward Brooks)
Religion
Memoir of Mary L. Ware, Wife of Henry Ware, Jr.
Hall, Edward B. (Edward Brooks)
Unitarians -- United States -- Biography; Ware, Mary L. (Mary Lovell), 1798-1849
This mention of the faithful domestic, "our Margaret," as she was always
called, who lived with Mrs. Ware seven years, discloses another trait of
character, more rare than it should be. The complaints that we
constantly hear of the selfishness and "plague of servants," demand more
consideration than they usually receive. The whole matter of domestic
service is becoming a serious one. Even where it is wholly free, it
affects materially the comfort of life, and exerts an influence on the
character of both the employers and the employed. Are the employers or
the employed most in fault? This is the one question which should be
deliberately weighed, instead of being dismissed with a burst of passion
or a smile of self-complacency. There are women who have little or no
trouble with their servants,--who retain them long, secure their
confidence for life, obtain from them better service than many who pay
more and exact more, and repose in them the most important trusts. To
this class we believe Mrs. Ware to have belonged. And the secret of her
success we suppose to have been simply this: she looked upon servants as
of the same species with herself; creatures of like passions and like
sensibilities; as liable to be selfish, unreasonable, and easily
offended, as those whom they serve, but not more; having equal claim
upon kind consideration, and a perfect _right_ to feel wounded and
wronged, if dealt with unjustly. On this subject Mrs. Ware seems to have
asked herself these two questions: Why do so many people, who are never
harsh or ill-natured toward any one else, think nothing of being harsh
and ill-natured toward their domestics? And why do many sound and
zealous religionists forget to carry any of their religion into their
intercourse and dealings with servants? It would not have been easy, we
think, to discern any difference in _her_ treatment of the highest and
the lowest, the affluent and the dependent. Nor did she think it her
duty to visit iniquity even upon the vicious, by withdrawing from them
all confidence, and turning them into the streets to sin and suffer
more. Not in words alone, or of one sex only, has she said, as we find
her saying in an aggravated case: "I see not why a man's sins should for
ever cut him off from the charities of his kind, if he is truly
penitent. What are we that we should condemn, if God forgives?"
In continuing our extracts from Mrs. Ware's letters at this period, we
shall draw freely from those which she wrote to the son who had been
left in Cambridge, and was now entering upon the work of the ministry,
feeling painfully the separation from his father, and the loss in part
of his guidance and counsel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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