Servants' wages range from £40 to £60 a year—I mean, of course, in good ordinary houses, and not in millionaire's mansions. Mr. C. Vanderbilt pays his chief cook two thousand pounds a year. I write the sum in letters that the reader may not exclaim, "Surely there is an error here; the printer has put one nought too many."
In spite of the enormously high wages they pay, the Americans have so much trouble in getting good servants that numbers of them are, so to speak, driven from their homes, and obliged to take refuge in hotels and apartment-houses.
Negro servants are the only ones at all deferential in manner, or who have a smile on their faces from time to time; but many people have an objection to them, and charge them with serious faults, such as finding things which are not lost, and breaking the monotony of life by dressing up in their employers' raiment when occasion offers.
An American of my acquaintance, upon going to his room one evening to dress for a dinner-party, found his dress-coat and waistcoat missing from the wardrobe. Guessing their whereabouts, he went upstairs, and there, in his negro-butler's room, were the missing garments. He rang for the culprit.
"Pompey, I have found my dress-clothes in your room. What is the meaning of it?"
"I forgot to put dem back, sah."
"You have had them on, you rascal?"
"Yes, sah."
"How dare you wear my clothes?"