Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/32

34 Ladies and gentlemen in England manage their private affairs as they think proper; but many American ladies dare not engage a servant, unless he or she happens to suit all the other servants in the house; they dare not give a five-cent piece to one, or a bite of meat, or a drink of ale, without giving the same to the others, lest they may pout and grumble, and perhaps go and talk and tell stories about her. This is a deplorable evil in America. In England, no family will engage a servant without the best recommendations from his or her last employer, but the families of England rarely part with an old servant. Sometimes they live thirty or forty years in one family, and what their master or mistress says is law and gospel with them. Servants, in England, are not allowed to call young ladies and gentlemen by their christian names, without prefixing to them Miss or Mr.; in America it is different. My little charge wanted me to call him Master, but I told him I would not do so, if he were as old as Methuselah. I will leave that word for the South, where it is exacted.

Often, in the afternoon, with my little charge, and the young ladies, I went to a little cottage or bower, at the end of the grove, where the young ladies passed much of their time, with their embroidery, battledore, and other amusements. We never resorted to this retreat unless accompanied by an enormous house dog for protector, as one of the young ladies, having strolled there upon one occasion alone, was met by a band of gypsies, and her watch-chain, earrings, and other jewelry demanded of her, which, from fear of her life, she gave up, and never recovered them afterward;