"
It was vain to offer money. "We don't need your money, ma'am; we can
support ourselves in other ways; my girls can braid straw, and bind
shoes, but they are not going to be slaves to any body."
In the Irish and German servants who took the place of Americans in
families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in favor
of a higher class; but even the foreign population became more or less
infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this country with
vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant and uncultivated
people such ideas are often more unreasonable for being vague. They
did not, indeed, claim a seat at the table and in the parlor, but they
repudiated many of those habits of respect and courtesy which belonged
to their former condition, and asserted their own will and way in the
round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be their right as
republican citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and struggle
between the employers, who secretly confessed their weakness, but
endeavored openly to assume the air and bearing of authority, and the
employed, who knew their power and insisted on their privileges.
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