Before January 1, 1881, a master was not liable to an action for damages in respect of any injury sustained by any person employed by him through the negligence of a fellow-servant; though he might be held responsible if the accident which caused the injury were caused by his own negligence. But the law has been altered, and a workman is now entitled to compensation for accidental injury sustained by reason of the negligence of any foreman or superintendent in the service of his employer; or of any person whose orders the workman was bound to obey; or by reason of anything done in compliance with the rules or bylaws of the employer, or in obedience to particular instructions given by any person duly authorised for that purpose: or in the case of railway servants, by reason of the negligence of any signalman, pointsman, engine-driver, &c. But the right to compensation is not to arise in case the workman knew of the negligence which caused the injury, and failed to give notice to the employer or some person superior to himself in the service of the employer; nor if the rules or bylaws from the observance of which the accident arose had been approved by the proper department of the government; neither would a workman who by his own negligence had contributed to the accident be entitled to compensation: the common-law rule as to contributory negligence being applicable. In case of any accident which is within the provisions of the Act, notice of the injury must be given to the employer within six weeks, and any action must be commenced within six months after the occurrence of the accident; or in case of death, proceedings must be taken within twelve months from the date of death. The compensation must not exceed in amount three years’ earnings; and the action must in England be brought in the County Court; in Scotland in the Sheriff Court; and in Ireland in the Civil Bill Court; the proceedings in each case being removable into a superior court at the instance of either party. The benefits of the Act do not extend to domestic or menial servants, but are available for railway servants, labourers agricultural and general, journeymen, artificers, handicraftsmen, and persons otherwise engaged in manual labour.
In case of the illness of a servant—unless such illness be caused by his or her own misconduct—the master cannot legally refuse to pay the wages which may accrue during the time of such illness; but the service may be terminated by notice in the usual way; the principle being that no man can be held accountable for what is beyond his own control. The servant being willing to do his duty, but rendered unable to do so by circumstances beyond his own control, he must not be punished for such inability by being deprived of his wages. A master is only liable to pay his servant’s medical attendant when the master has employed him, but not when the doctor is employed by the servant himself.
A master may bring an action against a stranger for any injury done to his servant, whereby he (the master) suffers loss or inconvenience, or for enticing his servant away, and inducing him to neglect or refuse to fulfil his engagement.
When a servant applies to any person for a new engagement, it is usual for him to refer to his previous master for a character, as it would be objectionable for a stranger to be employed without some means of knowing whether he was competent and respectable. In answering inquiries as to character and ability, it is necessary to be very careful to say neither more nor less than the exact truth. If an undeserved bad character be given, the servant may recover damages, on establishing malice and want of probable cause, in an action for libel or slander, according to the mode in which the character was given, in writing or verbally. On the other hand, suppression of unfavourable facts may have still more serious consequences. If a servant be known to be dishonest, and his master ventures to recommend him as trustworthy, he will render himself liable to make good any loss occasioned by subsequent acts of dishonesty which may be committed by the servant in his new situation, and which without such recommendation could not have been committed. When nothing favourable can be said, the safest way is to decline to answer any inquiries on the subject. But it would be unfair to adopt this course without adequate cause, for such refusal would inevitably be construed as equivalent to giving the servant a bad character, and would frequently prove an obstacle to his obtaining another situation.
HEROINES.
Most of us have heard of a certain thoughtful little girl who took Time by the forelock, and decided that if women must have some profession to turn to, she would be a Professional Beauty. There are thousands of girls, older and wiser, who yearn to be heroines, and have quite as vague notions about it. There are countless women, with characters still fresh and plastic, who find existence but a dull level. Life is a narrow lane to them. They would like mountaineering. They want adventure. They sigh to be heroines.
What are heroines, after all? Let us look for the reality, and not for a dream, or we shall go mountaineering, and be lost among shadows when the darkness of age begins to fall. In the real life we are all living, how does one get to be a heroine? Are there any, and where are they? Who shall tell us? Can the novelists? For the most part, no. The ordinary sort of fiction is full of ambitious flecks and flaws; how can it know and describe the most delicate and intricate, the most minutely beautiful of human characters? There is a novel in which the hero exclaims pathetically that he was ‘a Pariah’ until he married. Could the inventor of the Pariah invent anything but a heroine to match him? The fiction that excels in the highest qualities falls short here. The best describer of life, even if his conception of this character be perfectly just, must be content with merely hinting it, for his space has limits. Instead of describing in half a page the colour of eyes, hair, and dress, and afterwards ten adventures and two dozen conversations, he could hardly be expected to write for one character a whole shelf of detailed volumes, and to gather his notes with the minuteness of a census-taker.
Let us look elsewhere. Several women have passed the old turnstile to public life, and got in somehow on men’s tickets. Their insignificant sisters peep over the wall, and observe that men who outside were the soul of chivalry, begin to elbow the ladies within, and ungallantly assert in self-defence that the ladies have elbows too. The insignificant sisters will not enter; but if they tried to reason about it, they would be ‘stumped out’ in a moment by the others on the platforms inside. ‘When I hear a woman use intellectual arguments, I am dismayed,’ says a wise thinker from beyond the Atlantic; and the insignificant crowd aforesaid and the majority of the world agree with him in this; and those outside the wall find out all at once that a woman’s unreasoning nature is no insignificant charm. ‘Her best reason, as it is the world’s best, is the inspiration of a pure and believing heart. She is happiest when she devotes herself, obedient to her patient and unselfish nature, to some loved being or high cause; and glory itself, says Madame de Staël, would be for her only a splendid mourning-suit for happiness denied.’
Shall we turn from the platforms, and look to intellectual culture? We see at the outset that it cannot be necessary to heroism; for all human nature’s highest prizes are open to all, and great intellectual culture belongs to the few. Besides, there can be such a thing as learning too much, and knowing nothing worth knowing. In America, where life is lived double-quick, and where every product from a continent downwards is of the largest size, there are crops of overtaught girlhood ripe already for our inspection. Women of the middle classes there can discuss the nebular hypothesis or the binomial theory, as ours talk of lacework and the baby. Mr Hudson, in his recent Scamper through America, declares that to converse in the railway cars with ladies returning from Conventions and Conferences was a genuine pleasure, an intellectual treat. But he adds, that though one could revere them, almost worship them, to love them was out of the question. ‘Practical passionless creatures, they seemed to constitute a third sex. Where were the girls? We never saw them. We did meet with young ladies of twelve and thirteen, with jewel-laden fingers, and with vocabularies of ponderous dictionary words; but, like their mothers and elder sisters, they were such superior beings, that one longed for a lassie that was not so very clever—one who had something yet unlearned that she could ask a fellow to tell her about.’
We have failed in the novels, on the platforms, and at the learned Conferences. Shall we carry our search to the haunts of human suffering next? There are hundreds of women, banded together or working singly, to whom every form of sorrow and helplessness is an attraction. They do not deal in dry statistical philanthropy, but in loving compassion. They are not ‘women with a mission,’ because the woman with a mission flaunts it before the world, and gets more or less in everybody’s way; but these desire to remain unknown, never counting the debt humanity owes to them. The wounded soldier on the battlefield knows them well enough; and the criminal in prison; and the sick, the poor, the aged, the young children. Sacrificing a whole life to the common good, they are heroines; it is beyond doubt. But not the heroines we seek, whose sphere is to be something more homely, easy, and attainable for all. However, these women, whose lives are compassion, have given a light upon the track. It dawns upon us, that in womanly heroism, self-sacrifice is the essence, and hiddenness marks it genuine.