MARGARET KAURNER.
[LETTER II.]
MARGARET TO HER MOTHER.
DEAREST MOTHER:—It is but a week since I wrote to you, and here I am inscribing another letter. O how thankful ought I to be that I was ever taught to write; it is such a pleasure and comfort to sit down and pen one's thoughts. I feel as if I were chatting with you as I used to do in our pretty little parlor. All is now very quiet in the house, the children are sleeping softly, and nothing can disturb me.
I am a very happy girl. My mistress is so reasonable, so kind, and so considerate. I have seen mistresses in this city who seem to imagine that their servants are destitute of all feeling; but my mistress is a Christian, all her orders are given in the kindest manner, and she takes great pains to teach me everything that I do not know. My happiness is increased by the happiness of the children. They are quite fond of me. They will stay with me as willingly as with their mother. This is a great advantage to her, for her husband being very often absent from home, she has to attend a great deal in the ware room—O, such a ware room, filled with muslin, in which my mistress deals. It is really beautiful. The muslin is so fine and even, and such a lovely white, the texture, too, is so delicate, that I think, dear mother, you would be as surprised as I was. I could not cease wondering how it was made. My mistress told me it was all spun by machines.
Who are the machines, I said, for I thought it was some particular sort of people to whom she referred. She heartily laughed at my blunder, and explained the thing to me. This surprised me more than before. She afterwards showed me some lace handkerchiefs, and dresses, the flowers on which were amazingly beautiful. These, she said, were not made by machines, but worked by the hand, by thousands and thousands of poor industrious people.
I mentioned to you in my last letter, that my mistress's house is very large and fine, and so it is. It stands in one of the broadest and handsomest streets in the city. A lady of rank lodges on the first floor. What a gay grand place is the city; how different from the quiet country village where I dwelt with you! The morning after my arrival the maidservant of our lodger came down to me with a clean white jug, with a plated lid.
"I say," she cried to me, "the girl that was here before you came, used always to bring the spa water from the fountain for my mistress. Will you do the same? It does not suit me to go tramping about with a jug in my hand, but you could easily spare a quarter of an hour in the evening, after the shop is shut up, and the children in bed; and my lady will very willingly give you a kreuzer * for every jug; and more than that, she will pay you regularly at the end of every week."