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Show A SERYANTIIAS RIGHTS As Well as the Mistress, and Their Lot is Not an Easy One. 'TIKES' THE SERVANT BODILY. Servants Sleep in Dark, Damp Dors Not lit to Keep Kettles in The Crisis Comes With the Baby. season wo feel the time well spent, which Is devoted to h-r. and no pains Is spared In try-I'm try-I'm to keep the little spark aelowr. rarrj i.iK or wneeling ih'P around in the shade of the house ami trees to nlv her the benefit of the fresh atr and sunllnht. Then when it In too warm to bo out we opeu her little Kiirinent. rub off the innlsture with a dry cloth, then move her from place to p a -e upon the bd or the hammock, trying to llnd the cojU at itpot, etc. it may now bo clear why tho servant did not take to that baby kindly. It can be imagined why all servants view witn apprehension ether people' babies. bab-ies. The baby business is not what it is cracked up to be. If tho servant does the washing (die must steam the baby's bandages iu hot water, and during dur-ing the dyseutery period this is not the sweetest thing in life. 1 am told Utah is a great place for babies. That tho average record is broken. And yet I did not read of any of the high society ladies explaining the servant serv-ant girl question on this theory. It may be worth inquiring into. It might sadly interfere with the scheme of uniformity uni-formity in wages. Mrs. thinks the wages shoiiKi be scaled, i presume this meaus $3 a week one baby, $(3 for twins, and $'J for triplets. EniTon op Thr. Times: I notice that yon give the views of high society ladies in regard to tho help question, and that they have all kinds of views in regard to what servant girls ought to be to como up to their ideas. Ono thinks $5 a week extravagant and simply outrageous- Another thinks ,hat wages should be "scaled" I pre-lumo pre-lumo like fishes and put in a pan and fried to tickle tho appetites of the eaters. There is a great deal of sympathy for the high society functionaries but uone for tho poor servant girl. These are tho "brilliant" women, as I learn from the society editor of The Times, and their word is ex cathedra on any subject. The plan of a uuion that will exclude from the homes of its members any girl .who .happened to be the victim of the vicious tomper of some otherwise very respectable lady, is so utterly ridiculous as to be fatcial. A union that would be general enough to bo effective would contain dozens of women who never wero intended to havo servants, and are not lit to own slaves, The trouble with tho servant question is as much with the mistress as with tho help. The servant girl in this country is often superior in birth and education to her mistress, and as long as this condition con-dition exists there will be a racial war in the household. The woman of common com-mon birth by petty tyrannies tries to enforce a distinction tiiat does not exist, or permits a familiarity that must lead to contempt and disobedience. I know a lady that retains her servants ser-vants until they marry, and another lady who "(ires" as good help once a week or oftener. As often as the. spirit moves her. Until tho social status of tho people is somewhat settled there will be a shifting of servants. John loses this week and the help must lose the next. He makes uext week, and the I know The Times will give a friond of tho working girl a chance to speak. In England servant girls are better treated than they are in America. They also keep their places better, because be-cause their mistresses know theirs. In the states tho wives who employ help aro very often illy prepared to take caro of them. They keep a dog without with-out a kennel house, and servants without with-out servant apartments. Tho dog can sleep on the porch, and tho servant in the pantry or in tho boot closet or some other damp place. In my short lifo I have seen not a little of tho trials of servant girls. I boarded with a landlady on Ninth street, in New York, who was always fussing about her girl. The girl used to make tho beds for twenty lodgers and alter her day's work was over sho would carry enough coal up three flights of stairs to keep tho stoves ail going. When night came this girl was so tired and fagged out that I looked for her. to drop in her tracks, from sheer exhaustion. Instead of having a room like tho rest of the lodgers she was given a little dark den in the basement that wasn't fit to hold girl's wages go up. Hut it is not tho work but tho social degradation that it involves that keeps many of the better girls from hiring out to the kitchen. To use ono of Bill Nye's illustrations, vou might as well expect to hatch a hotel by setting a hen on a door knob as to try to get a servant to mend her ways by cackling at her. A servant, nine times in ten, is good or bad, as the example of her mistress is good or bad. Flimsy mistresses make slatternly servant ser-vant girls. If the union had full swing, Bridge would have to serve on the terms aud at the prices the union dictated, or all the doors would be shut in her face. Turned out to the world on her own resources re-sources sho would have but herself to s;ll. The servant girl's lot is too hard already. The women who were accustomed to pay $1.50 a week in the east, no doubt, land it hard to pay from .$3 to $5 here. But things come higher in the west even servants. I paid $8 for a pair of shoes that cost the dealer who sold me them $15.50, and they pinched my feet in the bargain. didn't go around to form a union to bring that shoo man to time. He is probably looking for me. It is a caso of nip and tuck. He nipped me and I tucked him. So of the servant ques- The only clubs that I ever knew to settle anydillioulty were hickory clubs, and then" it required a deal of cracking heads. Wax Works. kettles it was so damp that it would rust them. I took the landlady to task for such inhuman treatment, and for some reason she took nu aversion to me. To get even with me sho "fired" the girl. To gut back at the landlady I quit the house. The hired girl nnd I quit. But wo didn't leave together. Don't you believe be-lieve it. Servant girls, as a rule, are too tired to be companionable and, as another rule, much better than they are rated by their mistresses. It is luxury lux-ury and idleness that begets licensious- """"frWhtOt)','1 but the boss. ' "I tired her bodily into the streot," I overheard a member of Salt Lake's upper-ten say but a short time ago, of a transaction she had with her hired girl. The mistress lost her temper and the hired irirl her place. These are the girls that according to "Unionist" are having too easy a time of it. Whenever the lady of the house gets her back up she pilches into her help, aud there are no such tongue lashings as a vixen tempered, nervous fretful American woman can lay on when she loses her balance. A man is nowhere. If anything goes wrong the hired girl will catch it. If the mistress goes to a ball and wakes up in tho morning with, a headache, she will make the servant "sweat" for it. All her petty spites are reserved for the girl. If her husban d scolds her sho will unload on the girl as soon as ho turns his back. A sister of mine, in the states, married mar-ried a sprig of a young clerk on $15 a week. No sooner married than sho must have a girl the neighbors all had them. It whs the proper caper. As . luck would have it there was no "chuck" room down stairs, nor "sweat box" in the attic to store the servant, and girl was given the best room in the house the visitors chamber. When visitors came the girl slept home. You see, this strait made it quite necessary that the girl be from the neighborhood. Sister Sis-ter was nice as pio to the girl on the start. She used to talk about the way neighbors treated their servants, and she was going to inaugurate a reform. This w orked very well for a timo. The time when it didn't work very well was when the girl got "spooney" on a ful-lowjthat ful-lowjthat sister sty led "a worthless chap." She couldn't see any sense in Mary sitting sit-ting up nights and wasting her energies on his likes. By this timo sho had forgotten for-gotten her coin ting days, and how I used to catch her jumping apart, when 1 came homo late, aud how hard she tried to look calm and proper. But when she caught the servant sitting too close she would lecture her ou tho proprieties. The servant became engaged and she couldn't for tho lifo of her seo how she could do it without first consulting her. She forgot that she gave herself away without asking lief of her brother. From that day on her kindness towards the servant grew less, nnd 1 could see it part. They got along for a long time without any open runcture, but tho relations wero strained. The crisis came at last. My Bister hail a baby. Tho servant did not like tho baby as well as my sister did. The servant was careless aud would let tho little dear in the draft. My other sister had to bo called home to look after this bit of humanity, hu-manity, and here is the way she de-. de-. icribcs.it: "Pha does, Indeed, keep us all Imstllncr, both ninln. ini'l ilav. Who Is a bright, rhprruil. lovalile little (larliiiK-t"lerably "i"1-nnturil Mil rheerful umter adverse conditions, viz: A leular and li n '-c miinued surcession uf Immense bolls over thr hark of lier Utile head aud neck. No sooner are two or three better than two or three ri-w I'ho uix-llke in their wake. So that for weeks she has not lieru able to lie with anv o imfort upon the I a 'k or side, hut riiost.of the time on the fare, and it was BlmoHt impossible for no alone to dress her er even adjust a garment. In addlt'n-i to this hhehas been threatened with dyeent ry and cholera iulantuin. Many times a day the cold perspiration rolls off her from twin and we hasten to roll her in hot flannels or pive her warm footbaths. Sh ! loves to Hop her limbs a id splash like 4u little birdn in a basin of warm water. She has surh bright, sparkling eyes violet, black. (Her pli tare doeg not besriu to do her justice-she was Hick. painful at the time and her distressed condition was secured hv some device of the artist I Well, the iit'le darlfiu; does take nearly all our time. I handed her over to Aunt HesHie saving I wanted to write to brother. I left Ulster making a flannel asirt fur her, and. as I lir-.jcred. ahe says, tell brother "1 never thouitht a half dozen babies would take half as much time aionr one does." Put let me add that "nothing in troublesome that we do willlntflv." She HU our hearts, end while so many dear little ones have not been able to "pull though" this terrible heated |
