“Oh, indeed!” I replied. “Then I suppose you would like your system of kindness carried out in the kitchen? and nicely they’d treat you for it!” “Indeed, I think not. At any rate, the stake is so little that it is worth the risk; and I, for one, have such faith in the power of kindness, _combined with firmness_, that though I don’t mean to say but that you might occasionally meet with ingratitude, still that would merely be the exception that proves the rule. The heart has been so wonderfully constructed that it has not been left to us to choose whether we would be thankful or not for benefits received; but gratitude has been, made an animal instinct. The very dog likes the hand that fosters it, and I do not think servants worse than dogs--though you and many other ladies I know seem to do so. Do you not expect from your domestics that they should consider your interest theirs, and yet you forget that the first step in the process is to make their happiness yours. How did they manage in the olden time? There was none of this hubbub about bad servants then, and none of this continual changing and changing; but the old servant’s son grew, like his father, to be grey in the service of the same family. And why was this? Because he was looked upon, and treated, and loved _like one of the family_. “Very pretty talk,” I answered; “then, I dare say, you would like them to come and sit down at the same table with us?” “They did so then, in _many_ families, and certainly in _all_ families of the same rank as our own. And what was the consequence? Why they felt, as they ate at the same board, that they participated in the comforts and property of their master, and consequently had the same desire as he had to increase the one and protect the other.” “Well, then,” I answered, “why not have yours up, and let them dine with you every day, if you prefer their company to mine, for _I’m_ not going to sit at the same table with them, I can tell you!” “No, Caroline, society has so altered since the time I am speaking of, that he who would endeavour to return to the old custom must be more case-hardened against the world’s ridicule than I am. To be candid, I am too much of a moral coward to be a moral Quixote. Society, as at present constituted, is so based upon pride, vanity, and show, that the principal struggle of life, in what is called the “genteel world,” is how to trick your neighbour into the belief that you are twice as rich as you really are--a species of moral swindling, or obtaining the world’s estimation under false pretences. And what comes of all this? Why, they who have but their three or four hundred a year must make it appear to the world that they have a thousand, and all this by good management, as it is termed--or in plainer words, by pinching the belly to adorn their back.” “Well, sir,” I stammered out, for I was getting in a passion--“proceed--pray proceed--I’m quite interested with the rubbish.”