Now what progress can even an intelligent, well-meaning, kind-intentioned mistress make with such a savage element as this?
One replies, "Oh, don't keep them, of course; get others." Very well – you wear out a pair of boots "getting others." To your horror, you discover that the new cook is subject "to attacks" which confine her to her bed, with – a gin bottle! till she feels like convalescing. The last lady she lived with, in the "recommendation" with which she got her own neck out of the noose, put yours into it by omitting to mention this little fact; so that again you must start on your travels "Intelligence" – ward.
During these changes of programme, a house gets pretty well demoralized; every servant who comes, expects to find nothing to do in the way of putting it to rights; and often when her lazy dream in this respect is realized, she will be very far, when she leaves, from putting her successor's mind, or bones either, at rest on this point.
All this is sufficiently rasping and vexatious. One lady remarked to me, "Oh! as for me, I neither know nor see, anything that they do. I have to choose between this or a lunatic asylum. I can't fight all the time; and if you change, there's only a new kind of misery."
"Your husband must have a long purse, my dear," I remarked. She shrugged her shoulders, and asked me "where I bought my new bonnet?"
Now, this state of things is deplorable enough. I can very well understand, and sympathize with, the disgust many right-minded women arrive at, after a panorama of such Sallys and Betseys have passed through their pretty houses, intent only on high wages, waste, and plunder. To fight it, only sours one's temper, and wastes one's life. There's no right feeling about them; they have neither conscience nor industry. "I have done my best," said a lady to me, "to teach and civilize and humanize them, but I tell you there's nothing to work upon; so, after giving my orders in the morning, I will neither hear nor see anything more about it."
Well, another lady will keep on her feet all day, trying to bring things to a focus; trying the impossible task of putting brains where there is nothing but a great void; trying to encourage – trying to lighten burdens by shouldering half herself, or getting substitutes to help; and thus by superhuman efforts she gets her husband's little culinary comforts all attended to at the right time, and every disagreeable thing put under lock and key before his return; but she sits down opposite him at the table with no appetite, with not an idea in her aching head; the well-ordered repast only representing back-aches and vexation of spirit.
Now this is rather a steep price to pay for housekeeping, and that is why the cunning little lady above referred to dodged it, and saved incipient wrinkles.
In conclusion, I beg leave to suggest to ladies that they must stop "recommending" dishonest or incapable servants, merely because "they don't want a quarrel with them." In the next place, if it be true that the keepers of intelligence-offices, for a stipulated sum, will furnish "a character" for any kind of girl able to furnish the money, is it not time something were done about this?
Finally, in the name of all the New York ladies, I know, or have heard speak, in private, on the subject, let China, or Africa, or Professor Blot with his travelling cook-shop, and all the laundry establishments, come speedily to the rescue, and find us a way of escape. If you ask, by way of postscript, if there are no exceptions to the kind of servants I have described above, I answer by asking you, how often you find a four-leaved clover, or a black holly-hock, or a green rose?
Let the poor wretch, smarting under the lash of the critic, remember that indigestion has lent point and bitterness to many a sentence which would else have been kindly. He can add to this, that critics are subject, like others, to envy, ambition, and little uncharitablenesses, which grow out of them. Also, that "mutual admiration" societies are not extinct. Also, that some critics look through political, some through religious, and some through atheistical spectacles; and if this don't assuage his anguish, let him remember that a thousand years hence both the critic and himself will have passed into happy oblivion.
THE HAPPY LOT OF A SEXTON
NOT a bad thing to be the sexton of a church. In the first place, he gets a conspicuous start in life, by advertising on the outer wall of the church, his perfect willingness to bury all the parish in which he carries on his cheerful business, – a business which can never be dull with him, because somebody is always dying, and somebody else is always being born for the same end. Then Sunday comes regularly once a week, so that his "shop" never closes, and consequently always wants his broom of reform. Then the sexton has his little alleviations, when he has had enough of the sermon: he can make an errand out in the vestibule, after imaginary bad children, who might disturb the minister, or to see that the outer door don't creak or bang un-Sabbatically. When he gets tired of that, he can sit comfortably down on his stool near the door, which he can tilt back on its hind legs, out of view of all critical worshippers (except me), and then, and there, he can draw out that omnipresent and national jack-knife, which is his ever-present solace in every time of need. First – he can clean his nails, and pare them, varying the performance by biting off their refractory edges. Then he can commence scratching off any little spots on his trousers or coat with the point of the same. When this little exercise is concluded, and the sermon is not, he can draw from another pocket a case-comb, and put those fine touches to his hair which the early church-bell had interfered with. It is tiresome on him then for a few minutes, unless some impertinent sunbeam gilds the minister's sacerdotal nose, and gives him an excuse for going up in the gallery to lower a curtain, in that dexterous manner which only a professional can compass. By this time "seventeenthly" having been concluded by the minister, the sexton hurries to the church-door, doubling up with a dexterous twist any aisle-chairs which have done duty pro tem. and tucking them in their appropriate corner, and then takes his position in the porch, the most important personage present save the minister himself. To the questions, "Is it the clergymen of this church who has just preached?" addressed him by some stranger, and "Is there to be an afternoon or an evening service?" and "Can you tell me where is the clergyman's residence?" and "Will you hand this note to the clergyman?" etc., etc., he returns a prompt and proud answer. And, even when Miss Belinda Jones steps to his elbow, and requests that he will pay a little more attention to ventilating the church between the services, and in fact during the week, in order that she may escape the infliction of her usual Sunday headache; and when she expatiates touchingly on the blessing and healthfulness and cheapness of fresh air, and his Christian duty to apportion a sufficient quantity to each individual to sustain life, and that meek and quiet spirit that is enjoined; even then, he bows respectfully, nor mentions that, were ventilation thus insured by open windows, and the life of the audience prolonged, it might make him a little more trouble in dusting the cushions, which he could by no means permit. The polite sexton does not mention this, nor that he "hates fidgetty females" but he bows politely and affirmatively, locks up the bad air in the church all the same, and goes home to his roast-beef and his babies.
Upon his box the hackman sits and reads the newspaper, while his blanketed horses wait for the coming customer. In the cars the mechanic holds it, hastily running over its columns at this his only time for reading. Even in the ferry-boat the clerk and school-girl bend their heads, absorbed and well pleased. At places of amusement, before the curtain rises, the audience beguile the time by conning its pages; and even early comers to church improve the minutes by perusing the Sunday-school papers before the services begin. With these facts before us, who shall estimate the influence, for good or evil, of the newspaper? Who shall question the dignity of an editor's position, or measure his responsibilities?
LITERARY ASPIRANTS
IT