A KITCHEN COLLEGE. 97 



of toil, the only variation being from scams to button-holes, from 

 button-holes to seams, yet she clings to "business" with the strongest 

 tenacity ! Why ? In the first place, she thinks it respectable ; " busi- 

 ness " is such a delightfully vague term ! It may mean anything. 

 But " service," there is no mistaking the meaning of that word. " Only 

 a servant " is considered the most contemptuous designation. To an 

 uneducated and untrained girl the rules and regulations of service 

 seem very rigid. Service entails neatness, order, politeness, industry, 

 truth, honesty, morality — in short, all the qualifications that go to 

 form a good woman and a good citizen ; and where, w'e may reason- 

 ably ask, are young women to acquire all those good qualities before 

 going to service ? Failing in them, they fail to give satisfaction to 

 the employer, and hence the everlasting complaints. Besides consider- 

 ing it a disgrace to be a servant, girls have an idea that in domestic 

 service there is no chance of "getting on," while "business" of any 

 sort is full of possibilities ; and a third and prevalent objection is that 

 they lose all opportunity of bettering themselves by marriage — their 

 prospects are limited strictly to their own class. Those are the 

 weightiest objections young w^omen have to service, and it must be 

 confessed they are not entirely unfounded. No doubt there has been 

 much done of late years to help servants, both physically and morally, 

 but I am not aware that anything has been attempted from a socio- 

 logical point of view ; their position is in many respects worse than it 

 was a hundred years ago. Then, though a servant was ill-paid and 

 more frequently not paid at all, there were compensations, there ex- 

 isted a certain amount of intimacy between master and man, mistress 

 and maid ; there were kindly feeling, interest, confidence on the one 

 side, fidelity on the other, the servant was not unfrequently the coun- 

 selor, and very generally the companion of the master, and took a 

 keen personal interest in all his afi"airs. Now there are mistrust and 

 suspicion on both sides ; the maid thinks the mistress makes it the 

 pastime of her idle moments to worry and find fault with her, while 

 the mistress believes the maid's chief pleasure in life is to cross and 

 annoy her ; both misunderstand each other, and the result is mutual 

 discomfort. Without exactly wishing to recall the days of "Caleb 

 Balderstone," one can not help desiring a better feeling between per- 

 sons who have to live in such very close contact as mistresses and 

 servants. In no other calling whereby a w^oman earns her bread is 

 she brought into such strictly personal relations with her employer as 

 in service ; under no other circumstances is an employer bound to be 

 so careful in investigating the character of the person employed. Our 

 children, at the most tender and impressionable age, are left almost 

 exclusively to the care of servants ; our food, on which so much of 

 the health and happiness of our lives depend, is entirely at therir 

 mercy. We intrust them with everything we value most, with n© 

 better guarantee of their efiiciency than the word or the letter,- of.. % 



VOL. XXXII. — Y 



