Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/302



 Mexican servants — Anecdotes — Remedies — An unsafe Porter — Galopinas — The reboso — The sarape — Women-cooks — Foreign servants — Characteristics of Mexican servants — Servants' wages — Nun of the Santa Teresa — Motives for taking the veil.

June 3d.

ask me to tell you how I find the Mexican servants. Hitherto I had avoided the ungrateful theme, from very weariness of it. The badness of the servants, is an unfailing source of complaint even amongst Mexicans; much more so amongst foreigners, especially on their first arrival. We hear of their addiction to stealing, their laziness, drunkenness, dirtiness, with a host of other vices. That these complaints are frequently just, there can be no doubt, but the evil might be remedied to a great extent. In the first place, servants are constantly taken without being required to bring a recommendation from their last place; and in the next, recommendations are constantly given, whether from indolence or mistaken kindness to servants who do not deserve them. A servant who has lived in a dozen different houses, staying about a month in each, is not thought the worse of on that account. As the love of finery is inherent in them all, even more so than in other