Oh, those shadowy corners of candle-lighted rooms, those spinets, those duos and trios, those ruffled squires and brocaded dames!--where are they now? His Man-Servants and His Maid-Servants [Illustration: His Man-Servants _and_ his Maid Servants. "JOVE _fixed it certain That whatever day Makes a man slave, Takes half his worth away_"] A New England farmhouse and a Southern plantation:--What a contrast the two presented in colonial days! In the homes of Massachusetts and Connecticut, the notable housewife was up before light, breaking the ice over the water, of a winter morning, preparing with her own hands the savory sausages and buckwheat cakes for the men's breakfast, and setting the house in order. To her it fell to take charge of the wool from the back of the sheep till it reached the back of her boy; carding, spinning, weaving, dyeing the wool, cutting the cloth, and sewing the seams, scouring floors and washing dishes; all these duties fell to the share of the Puritan Priscillas. Yet, when evening fell, when the dishes were shelved on the dresser, these busy housewives, in their sanded kitchens, with the firelight reflected from their shining tins, were not to be pitied, even in comparison with their more luxuriously attended sisters in Maryland or Virginia. Life at the South was at once grander and shabbier, than in New England. The Southerner's ease-loving nature had the power to ignore detail; and it is attention to detail which brings well-being to the household and wrinkles to the housekeeper. A thousand slaves could not take the place of one woman of "faculty." In fact, the more shiftless, lazy negroes there were, the less order and tidiness prevailed. But order and tidiness were not indispensable to happiness there and then, and the sum of human enjoyment was large on those old plantations, in spite of shiftlessness and slavery. Of that restless ambition which corrodes modern life, men had little, women had none, and servants less than none. The negro was a true child of the tropics, and with food and sunshine enough, was merry as the day is long. A healthy negro, on a prosperous estate, under the charge of a gentleman, not under the bane of an overseer, came perhaps as near to animal cheerfulness as mortal often does. The master enjoyed that serenity and leisure which freedom from manual labor gives; his children grew up, each with a personal retainer attached to himself with the old feudal loyalty; the lady of the house was again the old Saxon _hlaefdige_, who gave out the bread to the tribe of servants day by day. Yet with all the brightness which can be thrown into the picture, slavery was a curse alike to slave and slave-owner, on account both of what it brought and what it took away.