Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/171



WO accidents have happened to lessen the comforts and profits of your employment; first, that execrable custom got among ladies of trucking their old clothes for china, or turning them to cover easy chairs, or making them into patchwork for screens, stools, cushions, and the like. The second is, the invention of small chests and trunks with lock and key, wherein they keep the tea and sugar, without which it is impossible for a waitingmaid to live: for, by this means you are forced to buy brown sugar, and pour water upon the leaves, when they have lost all their spirit and taste. I cannot contrive any perfect remedy against either of these two evils. As to the former, I think there should be a general confederacy of all the servants in every family, for the publick good, to drive those china hucksters from the doors; and as to the latter, there is no other method to relieve yourselves, but by a false key, which is a point both difficult and dangerous to compass; but, as to the circumstance of honesty in procuring one, I am under no doubt, when your mistress gives you so just a provocation by refusing you an ancient and legal perquisite. The mistress of the tea shop may now and then give you half an ounce; but that will be only a drop in the bucket: therefore I fear you must be forced, like the rest of your sisters, to run in trust, and pay for it out of your wages, as far as Rh