Now I can understand why so few servants, in this country, white or black, are willing to wear anything that bears the interpretation of "a livery." At the same time, there is hardly a housekeeper or mistress in the land who is not annoyed by the big hoop, and the long dress, which knocks over articles, and catches in doors, and trips up the unlucky wearer in doing her housework, or waiting on table.
Of course, if she understood managing her crinoline as she moved about, as does her "mistress," these things might not happen; but she does not; and it is the biggest and stiffest that she can find that she generally prefers and wears. This is unfortunate for another reason; because it often exposes dilapidated and soiled underclothing, and a very questionable state of shoe and stocking. That her mistress, though cleanly, often dresses in questionable taste, both as regards the adaptability of her dress to the state of her husband's purse, and the artistic selection of colors, does not make these glaring mistakes of her servants less palpable, or less injurious to the servant's morality; for where the passion for show, joined to narrow means, effaces that of decency and cleanliness, the downward road to ruin, for a woman in any station, is already entered upon. It needs only a very slight impetus to determine the final result.
Alas! the showy bonnet and gay dress, which must be had by cook or chamber-maid, although they have not a decent change of underclothing, or a whole pair of stockings, a warm shawl, or a pair of India-rubbers, or the least hint of flannel for cold weather! Now, they "have a right," as they say, so to expend their wages, if they choose. They have a right also to languish on a hospital bed, among strangers, when sickness and poverty overtake them. But is it wise?
In England, the dress of servants has not hitherto, as I understand it, been a matter of choice to them. I know of an English lady who, not long since, forbade her nurse to wear a dress, which the latter had purchased, because it was like that which one of her own children wore. Servants, in England, have leaped over this form of restriction, it would seem. Among the "reforms" now proposed, there is one respecting domestic servants, whose extravagance in dress, whose depravity of morals, and unreliability of conduct is, they say, becoming "unendurable." A clergyman's wife has started a reform movement, and calls upon the ladies of England to help her carry it out. She proposes "that no servant, under pain of dismissal, shall wear flowers, feathers, brooches, buckles, or clasps, ear-rings, lockets, neck-ribbons, velvets, kid gloves, parasols, sashes, jackets, or trimming of any kind, on dresses, and, above all, no crinoline. No pads to be worn, or frizettes, or chignons, or hair ribbons. The dress is to be gored, and made just to touch the ground, and the hair to be drawn closely to the head, under a round, white cap, without trimming of any kind. The same system of dress is recommended for Sunday-school girls, school-mistresses, church-singers, and the lower orders generally." I think "the Sunday-school girls, church-singers, school-mistresses, and lower orders," in America, generally, would have to undergo a most wonderful peeling, according to this programme! I think an American "servant" would scarcely be content to be deprived of her "parasol," of a hot Sunday, when she went to church.
No, no, ladies; that's not the way to do it; not even in England, where flunkeys abound. The "lower orders" are waking up there, thank God! and I hope, to their best interests. True, it is mournful to see all a servant's wages on her head, in the shape of a gay dress-bonnet. I hate it; but I hate it for her own sake, because she needs so many comfortable things that the sum so expended would buy. And I hate, just as much, to see her mistress in a velvet cloak, which represents all her husband's earnings for one month, while there is a shabby carpet on her front entry or chamber, and "nicked" cups and saucers on her table. In fact, I think, that while the parlor sets so bad an example, the kitchen will never be swept with a clean broom.
[THE MOTHER-TOUCH.]
HOW soon the house shows its absence! How little the lack of her executive watchfulness is realized till, like her plants that droop for want of water, everything about the house has somehow a wilted look! For was it not "mother" who moved about, instinctively placing a bright-colored vase just where the light would most effectually fall on it, and raised a curtain, or drew it aside, from the same artistic impulse?—who opened a window here or closed it there, just at the right moment, to make the temperature of the house agreeable?—who, passing into one room, straightened a cloth that was ever so little awry upon the table, or put out of the way some carelessly placed footstool, over which some stranger foot might have stumbled; or put sofas and chairs in such neighborly and comfortable proximity, that it was really quite wonderful how they could help carrying on a conversation with each other?