—General Grant's successor seems to be in earnest upon one subject, in his apparent purpose in regard to which he must have the hearty approval of good men of all parties—civil service reform. In this there is no doubt that General Grant himself was at first quite as earnest. But the Republican politicians were too much for him; his own military habits of thought and his devotion to his personal friends also led him to adopt a course of action in this respect inconsistent with the purpose which he first avowed in regard to it; and the great and much needed reform still remains to be worked out. After all, the principal point, the great good, to be attained is the suppression of office-seeking as a sort of business, the extinction of office-seekers as a class. Our politics are sadly in need of purification. The corruption which disgraces our Government in the eyes of all good men at home and abroad taints both parties. In this respect there is nothing to choose between them. Now nothing would tend so much to better our condition in this respect as the absolute removal from the arena of political strife of the tens of thousands of minor offices at the disposal of the party in possession of the Government. Let them no longer be the prizes of victory at the polls, and the men who now make politics a trade would find their occupation gone, and they would no longer concern themselves much about nominations and elections. The political affairs of the country would then naturally fall into the hands of the honest, intelligent, and thrifty men who now have little influence upon them. Let it be once understood that, whatever party is in power, no man in office, except those directly around the President, is to be removed except for incompetence, neglect, or malversation, and the first great step will have been taken toward our political regeneration. Nor is its influence upon politics the only great benefit which would thus be secured. The existence of a great body of men who are withholding themselves from the ordinary business and work of life in the hope that something will turn up in politics which will enable them to live, and perhaps to get money in irregular ways, by office-holding, is demoralizing. It tends to make and to keep in existence a body of shiftless men who otherwise would be obliged to turn their attention to mechanics, to trade, to agriculture. It helps to increase our too great tendency to speculative and unstable habits of life. It is bad in every way. As to the particular method by which the much-needed change is to be brought about there may be various opinions; but among sensible and decent men there is none as to the prime necessity of the extinction of office-seeking. In whatever he may do to effect this the new President will have the best wishes even of the greater number of those who cast their votes against him.
—From civil service to domestic service is a great leap; but there is this likeness between the two, that both, in this country at least, are in a deplorable condition of inefficiency. And as to domestic service, the complaints of householders in England are hardly less loud and grievous than those which go up daily in America. In both countries there is a great cry for provision for unemployed women; and yet in both countries the procurement of women capable and willing to give good household work in return for good wages seems to vibrate between the not remote points of difficulty and impossibility. Disorder, dirt, waste, and cooking which is only the destruction of good viands by reducing them to an unpalatable and indigestible condition are, according to all accounts, the lot of all housekeepers whose means do not enable them to procure the most skilful and highly trained domestic servants. In England a strange remedy has been proposed, adopted in a measure, and thus far with success. It is the introduction of what are called, even in England, "lady helps." There is something amusing in seeing our cousins, who used to sneer at the Yankee phrase "helps," and also at the Yankee help herself, who would not be regarded (unwisely it may be) as a servant, turn in despair to the word and the thing as the only relief in their domestic perplexity. The scheme was first proposed by Mrs. Crayshaw, of Cyfarthfa Castle, the wife of one of the wealthiest iron masters in England. Considering the fact, known to everybody there, that there were thousands of poor gentlewomen—that is, of women born and bred in the comparatively wealthy and cultivated classes—who were absolutely penniless, living in want, in suffering, or in a pitiful and oppressive dependence, she thought that many of these women would be willing to enter domestic service under certain conditions. She made inquiries; she was encouraged; and she set herself to work to effect what promises to be a great and beneficent reform. The conditions which she exacted for her protegées were that they should have comfortable and separate rooms, that they should be called upon to do none of the rough work, like scrubbing, for example, or boot-cleaning (although they were responsible for its being well done), and that they should be treated with personal respect. They were to be called "lady helps." She started her project only about two years ago; and although it was met at first with incredulity and with ridicule, already it is so successful that although the applicants for such employment are many, she cannot supply the demand by housekeepers for her helpful ladies. For it is found that these ladies give what is wanted, intelligent, conscientious service. They are truthful; they can be trusted; they learn easily; they work well; they are quiet, pleasant in manner; and, strange to say, they are cheerful. To the last one other of her conditions may contribute largely. They are to be hired only in couples, so that they have companionship of their own sort. What will be the end of all this who can tell? The prospect, however, is cheering to that class of householders who have not large means and who yet require faithful, well-trained, intelligent domestic servants for their daily comfort, and no less to a large class of respectable and educated women, who may find under the new domestic regime a refuge from the woes of extremest poverty—poverty which presses the more hardly upon them because they are educated and respectable. There is nothing in itself degrading in the performance of domestic labor; quite the contrary. No woman who is worthy of her sex hesitates to perform it for her husband, her children, or herself, or feels in the least degraded thereby, or is so regarded by her acquaintances. The feeling against performing it for others is a mere prejudice born of custom, of fashion. Let it once be understood that no woman loses the respect of others or need diminish her own by doing it for others as a means of livelihood, and the ranks of lady helps will be crowded.
—In illustration and in furtherance of Mrs. Crayshaw's truly, and, it would seem, wisely benevolent scheme, a little book has just been published in England, and reprinted in this country. It is by Mrs. Warren, who is the writer of some half a dozen excellent hand-books of household management. It professes to tell the story of the troubles of a small household, that of a professional man, whose wife is reduced to despair by the incompetence, the neglect, the wastefulness, the untruthfulness, and the dishonesty of the servants, who come to her one after another, each worse than the other. The causes of complaint are exactly those from which American housewives suffer. Depending upon her servants, whose deficiencies she is incapable of supplying herself, she is sometimes unable to give her husband a wholesome meal, decently served; and this preys upon her to such a degree that when he happens to be kept away she fancies that he remains away voluntarily because his home is unattractive. In her despair she proposes a "lady help" to him. He scouts the suggestion. The thing is impossible, ridiculous. She practises a pious deceit upon him; gets a lady help surreptitiously into the house, and keeps her out of sight until order, and cleanliness, and good dinners have subdued him into a proper frame of mind to receive with meek acquiescence the announcement of the origin of this beneficent change. Then all goes on happily. Money is saved, comfort supplants wretchedness and confusion, and domestic life becomes enjoyable upon a small income. It must be admitted that the authoress has it all her own way. The lady help is a paragon. She is the niece of a distinguished man of science, well bred, highly educated, self-respecting, but humble and modest, kind-hearted, and without the least pride or false shame. She is an angel of goodness to the under servant, who does the coarse work of the house, and teaches her as if she were her younger sister. She herself, although invited into the parlor and to sit at the family table, prefers to remain in the kitchen, which she brings into such a condition of neatness and order that it is a sort of little culinary palace. Plainly such women cannot be always looked for in "lady helps," and, moreover, there is this difficulty: If it should get about, as it surely would, that such a paragon of womanhood and housekeeping skill was to be found, if she had only moderate personal attraction, the kitchen over which she "presided" would be besieged by an army of bachelors, among whom it would be quite out of the order of nature that there should not be one that would victoriously carry her captive and put her in a parlor somewhere, with "helps," lady or other, to do her bidding.
—A story quoted by Mrs. Warren in illustration of the imperfect apprehension and confused memory of many people, particularly those of the class from which servants usually come, is too good to be passed by. The Rev. Dr. McLeod relates in his journal that he once received from two intending communicants the following replies to the following questions:
Who led the children of Israel out of Egypt?—Eve.
Who was Eve?—The mother of God.
What death did Christ die? [After a long time came the answer]—He was hanged on a tree.
What did they do with the body?—Laid it in a manger.
What did Christ do for sinners?—Gave his Son.
Do you know of any wonderful works that Christ did?—Made the World in six days.