Letters to Persons Who Are Engaged in Domestic Service

by Catharine Esther Beecher

and therefore it is of the utmost consequence that you find your associates among the most respectable, amiable, and conscientious persons, and that you shun the society of the gay, thoughtless and unprincipled.

There is another point where domestics feel that their employers have no right to control, and this still more demands your attention, in order that you may do what is right and best for yourselves. I refer to the frequent attendance on evening meetings, and the late hours which are sometimes the consequence of this. Now what I wish you to reflect on, in reference to this, I can best exhibit by relating another story.

A Story.

Once there was a very good king, and he had a large residence at some distance from his court. At this residence there was a large household of servants, whose business it was to keep it in constant readiness, so that whenever the king wished, he could go there and find every thing in order.

Now these servants were very apt to be

careless and negligent of their business, and often became so engrossed in their own amusements, that they forgot entirely the business they were placed there to do. In consequence of this, the king used often to send messengers to them, who would strive to keep them in order, and who wrote down in a book the rules that should guide them in the performance of every duty. But there still continued great havoc, waste and misrule. At last the only son of the king, who was a very tender-hearted prince, and loved these servants very much, came among them; for he feared that unless something was done, when his father arrived, they would all be turned away, and become miserably poor and wretched. So this excellent prince came and staid a long time with these servants; he worked with them himself, and showed them by his own example, the right way of doing every thing; and then he wrote down the rules in a book, and placed it so that every one could go to it and learn their duties.

But it was not a long time after the prince returned to his father’s court, before all the servants

were divided up into parties about the proper way of doing the work. All agreed that the prince told them that his father would soon come, that he would come suddenly and unexpectedly—and that it was his will that every part of the house should be cleansed, and every thing put in order. There was no dispute about this.

But the parties were divided in this manner: A large portion of them maintained that the most important thing to be done was to have the water for cleaning house kept very hot, and that it must be hot all the time—and so they spent most of their time in getting fuel and blowing the fire—and they would sit up sometimes half the night to make fires and keep the water hot. And they considered themselves as the best servants in the house for their care and diligence in this respect, and upbraided their companions for allowing so much coldness to get in the water they were to use.

Then there was another portion that were very much excited about the manner in which the water was to be used.