"I do not mean helped out of his trade, but helped to make the best of it, and of the intellect that finds its development in that way." "Very good. But yet I don't see how you apply your supposition." "For an instance of application, then: How many respectable people know or care a jot about their servants, except as creatures necessary to their comfort?" "Well, Miss Clare," said Judy, addressing her for the first time, "if you had had the half to do with servants I have had, you would alter your opinion of them." "I have expressed no opinion," returned Miss Clare. "I have only said that masters and mistresses know and care next to nothing about them." "They are a very ungrateful class, do what you will for them." "I am afraid they are at present growing more and more corrupt as a class," rejoined Miss Clare; "but gratitude is a high virtue, therefore in any case I don't see how you could look for much of it from the common sort of them. And yet while some mistresses do not get so much of it as they deserve, I fear most mistresses expect far more of it than they have any right to." "You _can't_ get them to speak the truth." "That I am afraid is a fact." "I have never known one on whose word I could depend," insisted Judy. "My father says he _has_ known one," I interjected. "A sad confirmation of Mrs. Morley," said Miss Clare. "But for my part I know very few persons in any rank on whose representation of things I could absolutely depend. Truth is the highest virtue, and seldom grows wild. It is difficult to speak the truth, and those who have tried it longest best know how difficult it is. Servants need to be taught that as well as everybody else." "There is nothing they resent so much as being taught," said Judy. "Perhaps: they are very far from docile; and I believe it is of little use to attempt giving them direct lessons." "How, then, are you to teach them?" "By making it very plain to them, but without calling their attention to it, that _you_ speak the truth. In the course of a few years they may come to tell a lie or two the less for that." "Not a very hopeful prospect," said Judy. "Not a very rapid improvement," said her husband. "I look for no rapid improvement, so early in a history as the supposition implies," said Miss Clare. "But would you not tell them how wicked it is?" I asked. "They know already that it is wicked to tell lies; but they do not feel that _they_ are wicked in making the assertions they do. The less said about the abstract truth, and the more shown of practical truth, the better for those whom any one would teach to forsake lying. So, at least, it appears to me. I despair of teaching others, except by learning myself." "If you do no more than that, you will hardly produce an appreciable effect in a lifetime." "Why should it be appreciated?" rejoined Miss Clare.