252 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire with your 

 valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap that you are 

 more down on than any other, and which you are gradually wearing your life 

 out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains you possibly can in that 

 direction, but it won't be of any use, because they will always fetch that old 

 scrap back and put it in the same old place again every time. It does them 

 good. 



And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with purloining 

 the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a hereafter.? Absolutely 

 nothing. 



If you leave the key in the door for convenience sake, they will carry it down 

 to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the vile pretence of 

 trying to protect your property from thieves ; but actually they do it because 

 they want to make you tramp back down-stairs after it when you come home 

 tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a waiter for it, which waiter will 

 expect you to pay him something. In which case I suppose the degraded 

 creatures divide. 



They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus destroying 

 your rest and inflicting agony upon you ; but after you get up, they don't come 

 any more till next day. 



They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out of 

 pure cussedness, and nothing else. 



Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct. 



If I can get a bill through the Legislature abolishing chambermaids, I mean 

 to do it. 



