Martha, the English maid, is chiefly in charge here, and she bravely tries to serve, and to bring some order out of the chaos; but the task is beyond her. We take places as we find them vacant, and each helps himself from what remains to be eaten of the fragments of the meal just ended. There is always a towering supply, but an abundance of a sort that deadens your appetite, like the blow of a sand-bag. I reproached myself with fastidiousness at first, and imagined that to the other servants, who shared it, the fare was entirely palatable; and so I was surprised when, at a dinner early in my stay, one of the negro laundresses seized a plate heaped with scraps of meat, from which we had all been helping ourselves, and carried it out with the indignant remark that it was fit only for the dogs, adding, sententiously, as she disappeared through the door: "We are not dogs _yet_; we are supposed to be human." And back to her afternoon's work she went, although she had eaten only a morsel. These meals were curiously solemn functions; scarcely a word was ever spoken. Martha was "cumbered about much serving," and very heroically she tried to impart some decent order to the meal, and a cheerfuller tone to the company. I never knew the cause of the sullen unsociability which possessed us, whether it was ill-humor born of the physical weariness from which all the servants seemed constantly to suffer as a result of the high pressure of work at the height of the season, or the revolting fare which often sent us unrested and unfed from our meals. It is the vision of supper that will linger clearest in my memory. The long, reeking room seen faintly in the yellow light of one begrimed oil-lamp; the ceiling so low that I can easily reach it with my upstretched hand, and dotted over with innumerable flies. The room is a paradise for flies, which swarm most in our food that lies in ill-assorted heaps down the middle of a rough wooden table. Here we sit in chance order, black and white faces often alternating; the white ones livid in their vivid contrast with the background of the room's deep shadows, and the others ghastly visible in the general blackness from which gleam the whites of eyes. Sometimes the two stable-boys find seats together; and then they bid defiance to the general gloom, and are soon bubbling over with musical laughter, that rolls responsive to the least remark from either. It is interesting at such times to watch Martha's face. The nervous energy which is always struggling there against a look of utter weariness shines victorious now, in the light of a new hope that a better cheer has come at last to her table. From breakfast I hurry back to the work of putting the grounds in order. The walks I sweep every morning, and then rake the drives and the lawns.