_Servants_.
The following sketch of what the Americans feel on this point, from Mrs.
Trollope's _Domestic Manners of the Americans_, is clever and amusing:--
"The greatest difficulty in organizing a family establishment in Ohio is
getting servants, or, as it is there called, 'getting help,' for it is
more than petty treason to the republic to call a free citizen a _servant_.
The whole class of young women, whose bread depends upon their labour, are
taught to believe that the most abject poverty is preferable to domestic
service. Hundreds of half-naked girls work in the paper-mills, or in any
other manufactory, for less than half the wages they would receive in
service: but they think their equality is compromised by the latter, and
nothing but the wish to obtain some particular article of finery will ever
induce them to submit to it. A kind friend, however, exerted herself so
effectually for me, that a tall stately lass soon presented herself,
saying, 'I be come to help you.' The intelligence was very agreeable, and
I welcomed her in the most gracious manner possible, and asked what I
should give her by the year. 'Oh Gimini!' exclaimed the damsel, with a
loud laugh, 'you be a downright Englisher, sure enough. I should like to
see a young lady engage by the year in America! I hope I shall get a
husband before many months, or I expect I shall be an outright old maid,
for I be most seventeen already; besides, mayhap I may want to go to
school. You must just give me a dollar and a half a week; and mother's
slave, Phillis, must come over once a week, I expect, from t'other side
the water, to help me clean.' I agreed to the bargain, of course, with all
dutiful submission; and seeing she was preparing to set to work in a
yellow dress parsemé with red roses, I gently hinted, that I thought it
was a pity to spoil so fine a gown, and that she had better change it.
''Tis just my best and worst,' she answered, 'for I've got no other.' And
in truth I found that this young lady had left the paternal mansion with
no more clothes of any kind than what she had on. I immediately gave her
money to purchase what was necessary for cleanliness and decency, and set
to work with my daughters to make her a gown. She grinned applause when
our labour was completed, but never uttered the slightest expression of
gratitude for that or for anything else we could do for her. She was
constantly asking us to lend her different articles of dress, and when we
declined it, she said, 'Well, I never seed such grumpy folks as you be;
there is several young ladies of my acquaintance what goes to live out now
and then with the old women about the town, and they and their gurls
always lends them what they asks for; I guess, you Inglish thinks we
should poison your things, just as bad as if we was negurs.' And here I
beg to assure the reader, that whenever I give conversations, they were
not made _à loisir_, but were written down immediately after they occurred,
with all the verbal fidelity my memory permitted."
"This young lady left me at the end of two months, because I refused to
lend her money enough to buy a silk dress to go to a ball, saying, 'Then
it is not worth my while to stay any longer.' I cannot imagine it possible
that such a state of things can be desirable or beneficial to any of the
parties concerned. I might occupy a hundred pages on the subject, and yet
fail to give an adequate idea of the sore, angry, ever-wakeful pride that
seemed to torment these poor wretches. In many of them it was so excessive,
that all feeling of displeasure, or even of ridicule, was lost in pity.
One of these was a pretty girl, whose natural disposition must have been
gentle and kind; but her good feelings were soured, and her gentleness
turned into morbid sensitiveness, by having heard a thousand and a
thousand times that she was as good as any other lady, that all men were
equal, and women too, and that it was a sin and a shame for a free-born
American to be treated like a servant. When she found she was to dine in
the kitchen, she turned up her pretty lip, and said, 'I guess that's
'cause you don't think I'm good enough to eat with you. You'll find that
won't do here.' I found afterwards that she rarely ate any dinner at all,
and generally passed the time in tears. I did everything in my power to
conciliate and make her happy, but I am sure she hated me. I gave her very
high wages, and she stayed till she had obtained several expensive
articles of dress, and then, _un beau matin_, she came to me full dressed,
and said, 'I must go.' 'When shall you return, Charlotte?' 'I expect you
will see no more of me.' And so we parted. Her sister was also living with
me, but her wardrobe was not yet completed, and she remained some weeks
longer till it was."
"Such being the difficulties respecting domestic arrangements," adds our
author, "it is obvious, that the ladies who are brought up amongst them
cannot have leisure for any developement of the mind: it is, in fact, out
of the question; and, remembering this, it is more surprising that some
among them should be very pleasing, than that none should be highly
instructed. But, whatever may be the talents of the persons who meet
together in society, the very shape, form, and arrangement of the meeting
is sufficient to paralyze conversation. The women invariably herd together
at one part of the room, and the men at the other; but, in justice to
Cincinnati, I must acknowledge that this arrangement is by no means
peculiar to that city, or to the western side of the Alleghanies.
Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of
the most daring youths animated by the consciousness of curled hair and
smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little
to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another 'how
many quarters' music they have had.' Where the mansion is of sufficient
dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little ladies, and the
slender gentlemen are left to themselves; and on such occasions the sound
of laughter is often heard to issue from among them. But the fate of the
more dignified personages, who are left in the other room, is extremely
dismal. The gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the price of produce,
and spit again. The ladies look at each other's dresses till they know
every pin by heart; talk of Parson Somebody's last sermon on the day of
judgment, or Dr. T'otherbody's new pills for dyspepsia, till the 'tea' is
announced, when they all console themselves together for whatever they may
have suffered in keeping awake, by taking more tea, coffee, hot cake and
custard, hoe cake, johny cake, waffle cake, and dodger cake, pickled
peaches, and preserved cucumbers, ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce, and
pickled oysters, than ever were prepared in any other country of the known
world. After this massive meal is over, they return to the drawing-room,
and it always appeared to me that they remained together as long as they
could bear it, and then they rise _en masse_--cloak, bonnet, shawl, and
exit."
_Conversation of an American Woman._
"'Well now, so you be from the old country? Ay--you'll see sights here I
guess.' 'I hope I shall see many.' 'That's a fact.--Why they do say,
that if a poor body contrives to be smart enough to scrape together a few
dollars, that your King George always comes down upon 'em, and takes it
all away. Don't he?' 'I do not remember hearing of such a transaction.' 'I
guess they be pretty close about it.' 'Your papers ben't like ourn, I
reckon? Now we says and prints just what we likes.' 'You spend a good deal
of time in reading the newspapers.' 'And I'd like you to tell me how we
can spend it better. How should freemen spend their time, but looking
after their government, and watching that them fellers as we gives offices
to, doos their duty, and gives themselves no airs?' 'But I sometimes think,
sir, that your fences might be in more thorough repair, and your roads in
better order, if less time was spent in politics.' 'The Lord! to see how
little you knows of a free country? Why, what's the smoothness of a road
put against the freedom of a free-born American? And what does a broken
zig-zag signify, comparable to knowing that the men what we have been
pleased to send up to Congress, speaks handsome and straight, as we
chooses they should?' 'It is from a sense of duty, then, that you all go
to the liquor store to read the papers?' 'To be sure it is, and he'd be no
true-born American as didn't. I don't say that the father of a family
should always be after liquor, but I do say that I'd rather have my son
drunk three times in a week, than not to look after the affairs of his
country,'"
_Hogs_.
"Immense droves of hogs were continually arriving from the country by the
road that led to most of our favourite walks; they were often fed and
lodged in the prettiest valleys, and worse still, were slaughtered beside
the prettiest streams. Another evil threatened us from the same quarter,
that was yet heavier. Our cottage had an ample piazza, (a luxury almost
universal in the country houses of America,) which, shaded by a group of
acacias, made a delightful sitting-room; from this favourite spot we one
day perceived symptoms of building in a field close to it; with much
anxiety we hastened to the spot, and asked what building was to be erected
there. ''Tis to be a slaughter-house for hogs,' was the dreadful reply.
As there were several gentlemen's houses in the neighbourhood, I asked if
such an erection might not be indicted as a nuisance. 'A what?' 'A
nuisance,' I repeated, and explained what I meant. 'No, no,' was the reply,
'that may do very well for your tyrannical country, where a rich man's
nose is more thought of than a poor man's mouth; but hogs be profitable
produce here, and we be too free for such a law as that, I guess.'"
* * * * *