i 9 2 MORE POT-POURRI 



their morning work. But the attitude of mind and the 

 ways and customs of servants are as incomprehensible to 

 us as are those of the gipsies ; and to worry and hurry 

 people who have not our views, whose laws are not ours, 

 whose morality is not ours, whose customs are not ours, 

 is a most useless tyranny, be it directed against gipsies 

 or against servants. These manners and customs have 

 grown up and are repeated by servants over and over 

 again, in a way that they themselves often do not under- 

 stand. One of their invariable rules, which is often 

 commented on, is that servants almost without excep- 

 tion refuse to eat game. It is generally supposed that 

 this is because game does not cost their masters and 

 mistresses actual money. This is so foolish a reason I 

 cannot believe it to have been the origin of the objection. 

 I feel it is far more likely that in the days before rail- 

 ways, when game travelled slowly, it was the fashion 

 for everybody to eat high game ; but when it got past 

 sending to table unbought luxury though it was the 

 thrifty housekeeper suggested to the cook that the servants 

 might have it. They had far better opportunity than the 

 master upstairs of judging what state it was in, and I 

 confess I am not surprised that as a body they declined 

 to make their dinner off it. And so that mysterious thing 

 a custom grew up for servants not to eat game. 



Servants, even the best and most devoted, will not 

 ' tell of each other.' It is useless to expect it ; just as 

 useless as a master expecting boys to tell tales at a 

 public school. And on the whole this is a good rule even 

 for ourselves. If a system of tale-bearing could be estab- 

 lished, it would make life unbearable for all of us. 



An eternal complaint against servants is about early 

 rising. I believe a number of people have no doubt 

 that fifty or sixty years ago (which is, I fancy, the time 

 when rather young people think old-fashioned servants 



