Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/107

Rh state of things is far from being asserted. The remedy, however, must be through a gradual reversion of all that brought about what is now endured with so much complaint and bad grace. And, first, we must begin to discriminate between housemaid and housemaid,—between work well done and utter incompetency,—and thus remove the low social dead level of domestic service which our early lack of discrimination engendered; In the constitution of things there is no more reason why one should consider himself "lucky" in having secured a good cook or chambermaid than in having purchased a fine picture. In the latter case it is presumed a high price has been paid to a master of the brush, and no notion of chance as a factor in the purchase associates the artist with a daub.

If, against such discrimination, it is urged that it would aggravate the present distress by adding innumerable inconveniences, the reply is an admission of involved inconvenience. The householder who determines to have either a good servant or none will sometimes be obliged to accept the latter alternative, and a general determination of this kind among employers would doubtless occasion much distress among a class of inapt domestics, who in their strait might possibly be driven to earn their bread in some coarser out-door field. But that this state of things would be worse than the present is not at all apparent. The sieve, the scale, and the measure have been found necessary in the adjustment of the commonest of our every-day transactions. Only in the kitchen, which in the process of our hasty and unsymmetrical growth has been left behind, have the lines of discrimination been trampled down. If it can be shown that the health and well-being of the family are less important than that coals should be regulated by a grate or that masonry should be paid for by the cubic foot, the present system may well be left to correct itself; but otherwise there should be no hesitation in calling things by their proper names and demanding of the house-servant ability to do what she undertakes.