Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/114

106 to two causes, which are observed to make the greatest revolutions in states and empires; I mean love and war. A stool, a chair, or a table, is the first weapon taken up in a general romping or skirmish; and after a peace, the chairs, if they be not very strong, are apt to suffer in the conduct of an amour, the cook being usually fat and heavy, and the butler a little in drink.

I could never endure to see maidservants so ungenteel as to walk the streets with their petticoats pinned up; it is a foolish excuse to allege, their petticoats will be dirty, when they have so easy a remedy as to walk three or four times down a clean pair of stairs after they come home.

When you stop to tattle with some crony servant in the same street, leave your own street-door open, that you may get in without knocking when you come back; otherwise your mistress may know you are gone out, and you must be chidden.

I do most earnestly exhort you all to unanimity and concord: but mistake me not: you may quarrel with each other as much as you please, only always bear in mind, that you have a common enemy, which is your master and lady, and you have a common cause to defend. Believe an old practitioner; whoever out of malice to a fellow-servant carries a tale to his master, shall be ruined by a general confederacy against him.

The general place of rendezvous for all the servants both in winter and summer, is the kitchen; there the grand affairs of the family ought to be consulted whether they concern the stable, the dairy, the pantry, the laundry, the cellar, the nursery, the dining-room, or my lady's chamber; there, as in your