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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



did her work at all the worse because she felt 

 herself at liberty to speak in this way to her 

 master's friend. Sometimes, indeed, this sense 

 of social equality may show itself in ways which 

 strike an English traveler as rather odd and not 

 quite agreeable. An English gentleman told me 

 that he was being driven through the beautiful 

 park at Philadelphia by an American lady with 

 whom he was staying. She wanted to leave the 

 carriage at a particular point, walk through the 

 Exhibition Building, and meet the carriage at an- 

 other entrance, and she asked her coachman, a 

 colored man, whether he thought the doors at 

 the other end of the building were open. " Dunt 

 know," was the reply ; " hadn't you better get 

 down and ask ? " If he had proposed that the 

 gentleman should "get down," it would have 

 been more consistent with our notions of pro- 

 priety. 1 



I was told that there are delicate distinc- 

 tions among the servants which it is necessary 

 for a stranger to remember. When you leave 

 the house an Irish girl will take your dollar 

 with as much satisfaction as a servant in Eng- 

 land receives the customary " vail." I believe 

 that most German and Swedish girls will be 

 equally accommodating. But I heard that if by 

 chance your friend has a genuine American girl 

 for a house-maid, she will resent the offer of 

 money as an insult. Whether this is true or not 

 I cannot say, as I did not happen to have the 

 opportunity of trying the experiment. A story 

 that was told me by an English lady living at 

 Ottawa — the wife of a colonel in the English 

 army — shows that the conditions of American 

 life have affected Canada. A girl applied to her 

 for a house-maid's place, and asked what seemed 

 to the lady extravagant wages. " How much did 

 you have at your last situation ? " asked my 

 friend. " Well, ma'am," was the reply, " I only 

 had six dollars a month, but the lady gave me 

 music-lessons." 



American mistresses have their sorrows, and 

 are disposed to envy ladies in England, who 

 seem to have their servants more perfectly under 

 command. But English mistresses are not with- 

 out their annoyances. I believe that the real 



1 An English servant who has not been well "brok- 

 en in " can sometime? be sufficiently free and inde- 

 pendent. A lady in the south of England had a new 

 house-maid who, after being in the house a fortnight, 

 omitted to put any water on the dinner-table. When 

 she was reminded of her omission, she replied, "Fur 

 varteen days I ha' putt they bottles on the table and 

 none of yur have drunk any warter ; I dunt mean to 

 put 'em on any more." 



trouble on the other side of the Atlantic, as on 

 this, is the difficulty of finding servants who really 

 understand their work. In the relations between 

 servants and masters I saw nothing that was of- 

 fensive ; indeed, I am democratic enough to think 

 that the friendly ease of the American " help " 

 is more satisfactory than the absolute self-sup- 

 pression and mechanical deference which are 

 seen in the servants of many English houses. 



When I said that in America there remains 

 something of the old-fashioned courtesy which 

 among ourselves must have vanished for at least 

 fifty years, I was not thinking of the relations of 

 the " lower orders " to their "betters," but of the 

 manners of educated American society. Again 

 and again I was reminded of the characters in 

 Miss Austen's novels. There was just a touch of 

 the same formality. " Politeness," which is a 

 word that has very much gone out of use in Eng- 

 land, still survives in America ; according to an 

 American author, "politeness appears to have 

 been invented to enable people who would natu- 

 rally fall out to live together in peace." As the 

 word is in more common use in America than 

 among ourselves, so I think that in the ordinary 

 life, even of those who are in no danger of " fall- 

 ing out," there is more of what the word denotes. 

 The disappearance of the reverential habits of the 

 last century is, of course, deplored. Jonathan 

 Edwards's children always rose from their seats 

 when their father or mother came into the room. 

 This surprising custom does not exist in any of 

 the families that showed me hospitality; but I 

 noticed that one of my young lady friends often 

 called her father " sir," and that she used the 

 word not playfully, but with all the respect with 

 which she would address a stranger. Her father 

 was not " stiff and unsociable " as Jonathan Ed- 

 wards was thought to be by " those who had but 

 a slight acquaintance with him," ' but one of the 

 kindest, simplest, and most genial of men. His 

 children were on the freest and easiest terms with 

 him, teased him and played with him just as chil- 

 dren on this side of the ocean tease and play with 

 their fathers; but the line of filial respect was 

 never passed, and the respect showed itself in the 

 deferential " sir." The " sir " was used, indeed t 

 unconsciously. I asked my young friend, who 

 was a bright, clever girl, whether she generally 

 called her father " sir ; " she said that she did 

 not know that she ever did, but within five min- 

 utes the word was on her lips again. A day or 

 two afterward I asked a gentleman, whom I met 



1 Hopkins's "Memoir" prefixed to English edition 

 of Edwards's Works, p. 44. 



