CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS. 251 



absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness, they make the bed just 

 as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the pang their tyranny will cause 

 you. 



Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they undo 

 your work, and thus defy and seek to enibitter the life that God has given you. 



If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way, they 

 move the bed. 



If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will stay 

 up when you open it, they always shove that trunk bacJs again. They do it on 

 purpose. 



If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they don't, 

 and so they move it. 



They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly 

 enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It is 

 because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and make wild 

 sweeps for them in the dark with the boot-jack, and swear. 



They always put the match-box in some other place. They hunt up a new 

 ylace for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass thing, where 

 the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that glass thing, groping in 

 the dark, and get yourself into trouble. 



They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in, in the 

 night, you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in the 

 morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the slop-bucket 

 by. the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in at midnight, 

 or thereabouts, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you will proceed 

 toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will disgust you. 

 They like that. 



No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay there. 

 They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is their nature. And, 

 besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and contrary this way. They would 

 die if they couldn't be villians. 



They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on the 



