A moderate style of housekeeping, small, compact, and simple domestic establishments, must necessarily be the general order of life in America. So many openings of profit are to be found in this country, that domestic service necessarily wants the permanence which forms so agreeable a feature of it in the Old World.
American women must not try with three servants to carry on life in the style which in the Old World requires sixteen,—they must thoroughly understand, and be prepared to teach, every branch of housekeeping,—they must study to make domestic service desirable, by treating their servants in a way to lead them to respect themselves and to feel themselves respected,—and there will gradually be evolved from the present confusion a solution of the domestic problem which shall be adapted to the life of a new and growing world.
SERVICE.
When I beheld a lover woo
A maid unwilling,
And saw what lavish deeds men do,
Hope's flagon filling,—
What vines are tilled, what wines are spilled,
And madly wasted,
To fill the flask that's never filled,
And rarely tasted:
Devouring all life's heritage,
And inly starving;
Dulling the spirit's mystic edge,
The banquet carving;
Feasting with Pride, that Barmecide
Of unreal dishes;
And wandering ever in a wide,
Wide world of wishes:
For gain or glory lands and seas
Endlessly ranging,
Safety and years and health and ease
Freely exchanging;
Chiselling Humanity to dust
Of glittering riches,
God's blood-veined marble to a bust
For Fame's cold niches:
Desire's loose reins, and steed that stains
The rider's raiment;
Sorrow and sacrifice and pains
For worthless payment:—
When, ever as I moved, I saw
The world's contagion,
Then turned, O Love! to thy sweet law
And compensation,—
Well might red shame my cheek consume!
O service slighted!
O Bride of Paradise, to whom
I long was plighted!
Do I with burning lips profess
To serve thee wholly,
Yet labor less for blessedness
Than fools for folly?