How to be Happy Though Married Part 10

Fifty years ago servants might be allowed to consider the warning of masters as a poor attempt at wit, as the Scotch coachman evidently did who, on being dismissed, replied, "Na, na; I drove ye to your christening, and I'll drive ye yet to your burial;" and the cook who answered in similar circ.u.mstances, "It's nae use ava gieing me warning; gif ye dinna ken when ye hae gotten a gude servant, I ken when I hae a gude master." As, however, servants are now seldom attached to a family by old a.s.sociations they look upon the withdrawal of notice as a sign of weakness, and give themselves airs accordingly.

We should give our orders in a polite but firm manner, like one accustomed to be obeyed. It sometimes simplifies matters considerably to make a servant understand that she must either give in or go out. When fault has to be found, let it be done sharply and once for all, but nagging is dispiriting and intolerable. "Why do you desire to leave me?"

said a gentleman to his footman. "Because, to speak the truth, I cannot bear your temper." "To be sure, I am pa.s.sionate, but my pa.s.sion is no sooner on than it's off." "Yes," replied the servant, "but it's no sooner off than it's on." Still we must never forget that the greatest firmness is the greatest mercy. Here is an ill.u.s.tration. The Rev. H.

Lansdell tells us in his book "Through Siberia," that a Siberian friend of his had a convict servant, whom he had sent away for drunkenness. The man came back entreating that he might be reinstated, but his master said, "No; I have warned you continually, and done everything I could to keep you sober, but in vain." "Yes, sir," said the man; "but then, sir, you should have given me a good thras.h.i.+ng." Many a servant girl has gone to the bad because at some critical moment her mistress did not give her a good tongue-thras.h.i.+ng.

It cannot spoil tried servants to ask their opinion and advice on certain occasions, but we should not expect them to think for us altogether. To do this makes them as conceited as the Irish servant who replied to his master when that inferior being suggested his views as to the way some work should be done, "Well, sir, you may know best, but I know better!" Still, it is well to let servants know as often as we conveniently can the reason of our commands. This gives them an interest in their work, and proves to them that they are not considered mere machines. Never let a mistress be afraid of insisting upon that respect which her position demands. In turn she can point out that every rank in life has its own peculiar dignity, and that no one is more worthy of respect than a good servant. We should feel just as thankful to our servants for serving us, as we expect them to be for the shelter and care of the home which we offer them. There is a perfectly reciprocal obligation, and the manner of the employer must recognize it. "Whereas thy servant worketh truly, entreat him not evil, nor the hireling that bestoweth himself wholly for thee. Let thy soul love a good servant, and defraud him not of liberty." We have no right to every moment of a servant's time, and he or she will work all the better for an occasional holiday.

Those who feel that they are responsible for the character of their servants will endeavour to provide them with innocent amus.e.m.e.nts. When papers and books are read above stairs they might be sent down to the kitchen. If this were done, literature of the "penny dreadful"

description would to a great extent be excluded.

Many employers behave as if the laws of good manners did not apply to their dealings with servants. Apparently they consider that servants should not be allowed any feelings. This was not the opinion of Chesterfield, who observes: "I am more upon my guard as to my behaviour to my servants, and to others who are called my inferiors, than I am towards my equals, for fear of being suspected of that mean and ungenerous sentiment of desiring to make others feel that difference which fortune has, perhaps too undeservedly, made between us." It is difficult, perhaps, to strike the exact mean between superciliousness and excessive familiarity, but we must make every effort to arrive at it. There is nothing more keenly appreciated by servants than that evenness of temper which respects itself at the same time that it respects others. A lady visited a dying servant who had lived with her for thirty years. "How do you find yourself to-day, Mary?" said her mistress, taking hold of the withered hand which was held out. "Is that you, my darling mistress?" and a beam of joy overspread the old woman's face. "O yes!" she added, looking up, "it is you, my kind, my _mannerly_ mistress!"

Part of Miss Harriet Martineau's ideal of happiness was to have young servants whom she might train and attach to herself. In later life, when settled in a house of her own, she was in the habit of calling her maids in the evening and pointing out to them on the map the operations of the Crimean war, for she thought that young English women should take an intelligent interest in the doings of their country. Mrs. Carlyle was another tender mother-mistress to her servants, though her letters have made the world acquainted with the incessant contests which she was obliged to wage with "mutinous maids of all work" as Carlyle used to call them. "One of these maids was untidy, useless in all ways, but 'abounding in grace,' and in consequent censure of every one above or below her, and of everything she couldn't understand. After a long apostrophe one day, as she was bringing in dinner, Carlyle ended with, 'And this I can tell you, that if you don't carry the dishes straight, so as not to spill the gravy, so far from being tolerated in heaven, you won't be even tolerated on earth.'" It was better to teach the poor creature even in this rough way than not at all, that she ought to put her religion into the daily round and common tasks of her business; that

"A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine: Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and the action fine."

So much of the comfort of home depends upon servants that a wise mistress studies them and values their co-operation.

"She heedeth well their ways, Upon her tongue the law of kindness dwells, With wisdom she dispenses blame or praise, And ready sympathy her bosom swells."

She sees that their meals are regularly served, and that they are undisturbed during the time set apart for them. She does not think that any hole will do for a servant's bedroom. When caring for the children that they may have their little entertainments and enjoyments to brighten their lives, she includes the servants in the circle of her sympathies; and is always on the watch to make them feel that they are an integral part of the home, and that, if they have to work for it and to bear its burden, they are not excluded from a real share in its interests and joys. In a word, she feels for them and with them, and as a rule they do their best for her. That servants are not always ungrateful every good mistress is well aware. Among the inscriptions to the early Christian martyrs found in the catacombs at Rome there is one which proves that there were in those days, as no doubt there are now, grateful servants. "Here lies Gordia.n.u.s, deputy of Gaul, who was murdered, with all his family, for the faith. They rest in peace. His handmaid, Theophila, set up this." Gentle, loving Theophila! There was no one left but thee to remember poor Gordia.n.u.s, and perhaps his little children, whom thou didst tend.

In managing servants a little judicious praise is a wonderful incentive.

The Duke of Wellington once requested the connoisseur whom the author of "Tancred" terms "the finest judge in Europe," to provide him a _chef_.

Felix, whom the late Lord Seaford was reluctantly about to part with on economical grounds, was recommended and received. Some months afterwards his patron was dining with Lord Seaford, and before the first course was half over he observed, "So I find you have got the duke's cook to dress your dinner." "I have got Felix," replied Lord S., "but he is no longer the duke's cook. The poor fellow came to me with tears in his eyes, and begged me to take him back again, at reduced wages or no wages at all, for he was determined not to remain at Apsley House. 'Has the duke been finding fault?' said I. 'Oh no, my lord, I would stay if he had; he is the kindest and most liberal of masters; but I serve him a dinner that would make Ude or Francatelli burst with envy, and he says nothing; I go out and leave him to dine on a dinner badly dressed by the cookmaid, and he says nothing. Dat hurt my feelings, my lord.'"

On the vexed question of "visitors," mistresses might say to their servants, "When we stay in a lady's house, we cannot ask visitors without an invitation from our hostess, and we wish you to observe the same courtesy towards us. When we think it advisable, we will tell you to invite your friends, but we reserve to ourselves the right to issue the invitation; and if your friends come to see you, we expect that you shall ask our permission if you may receive them." A mistress who does not forget the time when she used to meet her affianced thus writes. "I always invite their confidence, and if I find any servants of my household are respectably engaged to be married, I allow the young men to come occasionally to the house, and perhaps on Christmas Day, or some festival of the kind, invite them to dine in the kitchen, and I have never yet found my trust misplaced. I should not like my own daughters only to see their affianced husbands out of doors, and, though the circ.u.mstances in the two cases differ materially, as a woman I consider we ought to enter into the feelings of those other women who are serving under us."

Half the domestic difficulties arise from a want of honesty among mistresses in the characters which they give each other of the servants they discharge. Many a servant receives flattering recommendations who does not deserve any better than the following: "The bearer has been in my house a year--minus eleven months. During this time she has shown herself diligent--at the house door; frugal--in work; mindful--of herself; prompt--in excuses; friendly--towards men; faithful--to her lovers; and honest--when everything had vanished."

It is often advocated that training-schools should be established for domestic servants, as a remedy to meet the domestic-servant difficulty.

But improvement must begin at the head. If we are to have training-schools for domestic servants, the servants may very well say that there ought to be a training-school for mistresses. To rule well is even more difficult than to serve well.

The mistress then should learn how and when everything ought to be done, so that in the first place she can instruct, and, in the second, correct, if her orders be not carried out. If she does any of the household work herself, let it be to save keeping a servant, not to help those she has. The more you do in the way of help, the worse very often you are served. Let your servants understand that you also have your duties, and that your object in employing them is to enable you to carry on your work in comfort. So much have young women been spoiled by this system of auxiliary labour, that one cook who came to be engaged asked who was to fill her kitchen scuttle, as she would not do it herself.

Mistresses must unite in the interest of the servants themselves, as much as in their own, to put down this sort of thing, for the demands have become so insolent, that, as a smart little maid once expressed it, "They're all wanting places where the work is put out."

CHAPTER XV.

PREPARATION FOR PARENTHOOD.

"If a merchant commenced business without any knowledge of arithmetic and book-keeping, we should exclaim at his folly and look for disastrous consequences. Or if, before studying anatomy, a man set up as a surgical operator, we should wonder at his audacity and pity his patients. But that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children without ever having given a thought to the principles--physical, moral, or intellectual--which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise at the actors nor pity for their victims."--_Herbert Spencer._

Whether as bearing on the happiness of parents themselves, or as affecting the characters and lives of their children, a knowledge of the right methods of juvenile culture--physical, intellectual, and moral--is a knowledge of extreme importance. This topic should be the final one in the course of instruction pa.s.sed through by each man and woman, but it is entirely neglected.

"If by some strange chance," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "not a vestige of us descended to the remote future save a pile of our school-books or some college examination papers, we may imagine how puzzled an antiquary of the period would be on finding in them no sign that the learners were ever likely to be parents. "This must have been the _curriculum_ for their celibates," we may fancy him concluding: "I perceive here an elaborate preparation for many things, but I find no reference whatever to the bringing up of children." They could not have been so absurd as to omit all training for this gravest of responsibilities. Evidently, then, this was the school-course of one of their monastic orders."

Parents go into their office with zeal and good intentions, but without any better knowledge than that which is supplied by the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy, joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers. "Against stupidity the G.o.ds themselves are powerless!" We all understand that some kind of preparation is necessary for the merchant, the soldier, the surgeon, or even for making coats and boots; but for the great responsibility of parenthood all preparation is ignored, and people begin the difficult task of rearing children without ever having given a thought to the principles that ought to guide them.

How fatal are the results! Who shall say how many early deaths of children and enfeebled const.i.tutions, implying moral and intellectual weakness, are caused by ignorance on the part of parents of the commonest laws of life? Every one can think of ill.u.s.trations. Our clothing is, in reference to the temperature of the body, merely an equivalent for a certain amount of food, for by diminis.h.i.+ng the loss of heat, it diminishes the amount of fuel needful for maintaining heat.

Those parents cannot be aware of this who give their children scanty clothing in order to harden them, or who only allow a dawdling walk beside a grown-up person instead of the boisterous play which all young animals require and which would produce warmth.

Fathers who pride themselves on taking prizes at cattle-shows for their sheep and pigs are not at all ashamed never to ascertain the best kind of food for feeding children. They do not care if their children are fed with monotonous food, though change of diet is required for the preservation of health.

And then as to the intellects of children. Ignorance puts books into their hands full of abstract matter in those early years when the only lessons they are capable of learning are those taught by concrete objects. Not knowing that a child's restless observation and sense of wonder are for a few years its best instructors, parents endeavour to occupy its attention with dull abstractions. It is no wonder that few grown-up people know anything about the beauties and wonders of nature.

During those years when the child should have been spelling out nature's primer and pleasurably exercising his powers of observation, grammar, languages, and other abstract studies have occupied most of his attention. Having been "presented with a universal blank of nature's works" he learns to see everything through books, that is, through other men's eyes, and the greater part of his knowledge in after life consists of mere words.

We are aware that it will provoke laughter to hint that for the proper bringing up of children a knowledge of the elementary principles of physiology, psychology, and ethics are indispensable. May we not, however, hold up this ideal of Mr. Herbert Spencer to ourselves and to others? "Here are," he says, "the indisputable facts: that the development of children in mind and body follows certain laws; that unless these laws are in some degree conformed to by parents, death is inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree conformed to, there must result serious physical and mental defects, and that only when they are completely conformed to can a perfect maturity be reached. Judge, then, whether all who may one day be parents should not strive with some anxiety to learn what these laws are." "I was not brought up, but dragged up," said the poor girl in the tale; and she touched unconsciously the root of nine-tenths of the vice and misery of the world.

Great as is the importance of some information, if children are to be properly reared, still knowledge is by no means all that preparation for parenthood should include. While Doctor Johnson was musing over the fire one evening in Thrale's drawing-room, a young gentleman suddenly, and, as Johnson seems to have fancied, somewhat disrespectfully, called to him: "Mr. Johnson, would you advise me to marry?" _Johnson_ (angrily): "Sir, I would advise no man to marry who is not likely to propagate understanding."

Would the doctor have extended this restriction to all men and women who are not likely to propagate good bodies and souls? We know that there are people whose misfortunes and vices will spoil and ruin, not merely the lives of those they marry, but the lives of their children too. The miserable inheritance of their imperfections will be transmitted to coming generations. If it were only possible to keep all these people single, those who will be living thirty years hence would be living in a very different world from this.

The only restriction public opinion now puts to any marriage is that it should not be forbidden by the "Table of Kindred and Affinity" contained in the Prayer Book. When will all improvident marriages be equally illegal? When will scrofula, madness, drunkenness, or even bad temper and excessive selfishness be considered as just causes and impediments why parties should not be joined together in holy matrimony. Only the best men and women of this generation--could these be discovered--should become the parents of the next.

It has been flippantly asked why we should consult the interests of the next generation since the next generation has done nothing for us. The answer is plain. We have no right to bequeath to it an heritage of woe.

Every man and woman can do much to make themselves worthy of the honour and responsibility of being a parent. Let them preserve their health, cultivate their social affections, and, above all, abstain from those sins which science and bitter experience a.s.sure us are visited on children. It is only when they do this that a new edition of themselves is called for.

"Who is the happy husband? He Who, scanning his unwedded life, Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free, 'Twas faithful to his future wife."

And who are the happy parents? Those who, scanning their unwedded lives, thank Heaven they were faithful to future children.

It is to be hoped that few men now are as careless or as ignorant of consequences to children as was Mr. Tulliver in George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss," when he picked his wife from her sisters "o' purpose, 'cause she was a bit weak, like." We have come to see that, in order to be good mothers, women must be very unlike Mrs. Pullet in the same story, who was bent on proving her gentility and wealth by the delicacy of her health, and the quant.i.ty of doctor's stuff she could afford to imbibe.

But parents have not altogether given up sacrificing their own health and the health of their children to the Moloch of fas.h.i.+on. They have not quite ceased to burn incense to vanity. We have still to complain, as did Frances Kemble, that the race is ruined for the sake of fas.h.i.+on. "I cannot believe that women were intended to suffer as much as they do, and be as helpless as they are, in child-bearing; but rather that both are the consequences of our many and various abuses of our const.i.tutions and infractions of G.o.d's natural laws. Tight stays, tight garters, tight shoes, and similar concessions to the vagaries of feminine fas.h.i.+on, are accountable for many of the ills that afflict both mother and child."

When King David was forbidden to build a temple for G.o.d's service because he had shed blood abundantly, with n.o.ble self-forgetfulness he laid up before his death materials with which Solomon his son might have the honour of building it. If parents would imitate his example and lay up the materials of good character and health, what glorious temples they might erect to G.o.d in the bodies, minds, and souls of their children!

CHAPTER XVI.

"WHAT IS THE USE OF A CHILD."

"A dreary place would be this earth Were there no little people in it; The song of life would lose its mirth Were there no children to begin it.

"No babe within our arms to leap, No little feet toward slumber tending; No little knee in prayer to bend, Our lips the sweet words lending.

"The sterner souls would grow more stern, Unfeeling natures more inhuman, And man to stoic coldness turn, And woman would be less than woman.

"Life's song, indeed, would lose its charm, Were there no babies to begin it; A doleful place this world would be, Were there no little people in it."--_John Greenleaf Whittier._

When Franklin made his discovery of the ident.i.ty of lightning and electricity, people asked, "Of what use is it?" The philosopher's retort was: "What is the use of a child? It may become a man!" This question--"What is the use of a child?" is not likely to be asked by our young married friends in reference to the first miniature pledge who is about to crown their wishes. They believe that one day he will become "the guardian of the liberties of Europe, the bulwark and honour of his aged parents." What a bond of union! What an incentive to tenderness!