[151] A visit to many New England burying grounds will illustrate this statement. It was doubtless a survival of the English custom. A curious and interesting collection of epitaphs of servants has been made by Arthur J. Munby.
[152] “... Help, for I love our Yankee word, teaching, as it does, the true relation, and its being equally binding on master and servant.”—J. R. Lowell, Letters, I., 105.
[153] Even Americans commented on it. John Watson writes: “One of the remarkable incidents of our republican principles of equality is the hirelings, who in times before the war of Independence were accustomed to accept the names of servants and to be drest according to their condition, will now no longer suffer the former appellation; and all affect the dress and the air, when abroad, of genteeler people than their business warrants. Those, therefore, who from affluence have many dependents, find it a constant subject of perplexity to manage their pride and assumption.”—Annals, p. 165.
[154] Autobiography, I., 331.
[155] Society in America, II., 248.
[156] Society in America, II., 245.
[157] Ibid., II., 254-255.
It is of interest to contrast this picture of service in America by an Englishwoman with one given a little earlier of service in England by an American. Elkanah Watson writes from London in 1782: “The servants attending upon my friend’s table were neatly dressed, and extremely active and adroit in performing their offices, and glided about the room silent and attentive. Their silence was in striking contrast with the volubility of the French attendants, who, to my utter astonishment, I have often observed in France, intermingling in the conversation of the table. Here, the servant, however cherished, is held at an awful distance. The English servant is generally an ignorant and servile being, who has no aspiration beyond his present condition.”—Men and Times of the Revolution, p. 169.
[158] Democracy in America, II., 194.
[159] The Americans in their Moral, Social, and Political Relations, pp. 236-237.