The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
assumption that they are under obligations to their employers. In
many cases, no doubt, they are, though probably least so where
gratitude is most expected. But, at any rate, employers are also
under obligations to them. When one thinks of all servants do for
us, and how little, comparatively, we do for them, it appears that
the demand for gratitude might come more appropriately from the
other side. It is an old saying that we value in others the virtues
which are convenient to ourselves, and this is curiously
illustrated in the popular ideal of a good servant. In the master's
estimate besides the indispensable physical qualification of
vigorous health--diligence, punctuality, cleverness, readiness to
oblige, and rigid honesty, of a certain sort, are essentials.'
We would look long through our laundries and kitchens for the
'hardworked, underfed scrub' of the above extract; and the 'servant who
has not from week to week, and month to month, a moment that she can
call her own, a single hour of the day or night, of which she can say,
This is mine,' etc., does not belong to so numerous a class that her
sorrows in this respect invoke commiseration in the public journals. But
great as is the difference still between English and American servants,
as indicated by the above extract, the former are in a steadily
'progressive' state, and every year brings them nearer in their
condition to the happy--and, fortunately for the rest of mankind, as yet
anomalous--state of American domesticdom. An article in the London
_Saturday Review_ thus comments upon this progress:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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