364 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



hired servant in the house of the employer, to whom duty 

 and obedience are due. Hence, trouble crops up, unless 

 the servant is unusually reasonable and hard to spoil. 



We know of one instance, Avhere a man and wife were 

 brought to Florida as servants ; the man had been a small 

 farmer and gardener, the woman had been brought up as 

 a servant, and had been such in the family of a friend of 

 their employer in the North. Many of the neighbors in 

 their new home were of their own class ; but a new coun- 

 try and sparse settlements are great levelers of "class," 

 and when these servants saw people "no better than them- 

 selves" received as guests, they rebelled, and finally, when 

 the humbler neighbors called on their mistress, they were 

 either turned away from the house without the knowledge 

 of the latter, who was an invalid, or else were invited into 

 the kitchen and detained there under the same circum- 

 stances as kitchen company. 



The result was the sore-offending of the neighbors, who 

 were led to believe they w^re so treated by orders of the 

 " grand folks." 



And finally admittance to the family table being refused, 

 the husband and wife helped themselves from the dishes 

 about to be placed on the table, and sat down to their 

 meals at the self-same moment that the family sat down to 

 theirs — " no second table for them ; no, indeed ! " 



' ' Up North " they had never dreamed of claiming equal- 

 ity ; but here, with superior education and habits to many 

 of the neighbors, who were treated as equals by courtesy, 

 they became demoralized, till finally, when patience ceased 

 to be a virtue and they were dismissed, they went about 

 slandering the kindest, most considerate mistress that serv- 

 ant ever had, as well as her friends before mentioned, whom 

 the woman had formerly served. 



So let this point be fully set forth, that the white servant 



