Many families think of
servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all
that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek
in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as
possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious
ones--and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in
the house.
Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their domestics
with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent; but there
is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the position.
That they treat their servants with so much consideration seems to
them a merit entitling them to the most prostrate gratitude; and they
are constantly disappointed and shocked at that want of sense of
inferiority on the part of these people which leads them to appropriate
pleasant rooms, good furniture, and good living as mere matters of
common justice.
It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that servants
should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladles who
yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures,
if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening,
seem astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more
disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs
in the kitchen where they have been toiling all day.
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