Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/183

180 a person to guide as through the intricate Continental streets to another shop.

The domeatics are prompt, faithful, and cheerful in their services. There is freedom, but no presumption in their manners, and nothing of that unhappy uncertainty as to their exact position, so uncomfortable in our people. In all these subordinate classes you see nothing of the cringing servility that marks them in England, and to which they are exposed by their direct dependance on their employers.

Our English friend, Miss ——, who has been repeatedly in Germany, and is a good observer, acquiesces in the truth of my observations, and says this general freedom of deportment comes from people of all ranks freely mingling together. If so, this surely is a healthy influence, a natural and beneficent effect from an obedience to that Divine precept, "honour all men." Wo to those who set the brethen of one family off into castes, and build up walls between them so that they cannot freely grasp hands and exchange smiles!

I HAVE just been to the poste to see our English friends off. Their departure is a sad epoch to us, for they have been our solace and delight. A curious scene is the "poste" in a Continental town. Here (and ordinarily, I believe) it has a quadrangular court, enclosed on three sides by a hotel and its offices, including that for letters, and having on the fourth side a passage through a stone arch to the