THE SERVANTS’ HALL.
In large establishments, the housekeeper, the lady’s maid, and the men servants out of livery, usually take their meals by themselves, in the housekeeper’s or steward’s room; but when they take their dinner together, they preserve an order at table like the following:—The housekeeper usually takes her seat at the head, and the butler at the lower end of the table; the cook at the right of the housekeeper, and the lady’s maid on her left; the under butler on the right, and the coachman on the left of the butler; the house-maid next to the cook, and the kitchen-maid next to the lady’s-maid; and the men servants always occupying the lower end of the table. The dinner is set on the table by the cook, and the beer is drawn by the under butler.
The servants’ table is usually provided with solid dishes, and with ale and table beer; and it is the business of the superior servants to see that their accommodation is comfortable and in plenty, but without extravagance, or waste and riot. In well-regulated families, the servants’ hall is distinguished by its decorum, good order, and even good manners, which the servants who wait in the parlour imbibe, and convey to the kitchen. Servants of coarse manners, vulgar habits, or profane discourse, and malicious dispositions, are shunned by others, and never make good their footing or rise in first-rate families, where all the good and bad qualities which belong to the superior ranks of society operate as much to their advantage or disadvantage as in any station of life. In truth, the servants’ hall is a little world by itself, in which the passions, tempers, vices, and virtues, are brought into play, and contribute their full share in promoting that welfare and happiness, which it is the object of this work to fix and improve.
APPRENTICES.
When a youth in the City of London is bound apprentice he is presented to the Chamberlain, who puts into his hands for his guide, the following instructions, and as they proceed from such high authority, they are thought worthy of being preserved in this volume as a body of instruction to apprentices generally.
A COPY OF INDENTURE OF APPRENTICESHIP.
