uld refuse none." Her letter of
complaint is worth quoting at large, as showing the conditions of the
New England housekeeper of that day in relation to her "help:"

"A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now I am
like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first coming to
me she carried herselfe dutifully as became a servant; but since through
mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for small faults, she hath
got such a head and is growen so insolent that her carriage towards vs
especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If I bid her doe a thinge she will
bid me to doe it myselfe, and she sayes how she can give content as wel
as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I love not quietness I
was never so fitted in my life for she would make mee have enough of it.
If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie
language she hath vsed towards me I should but grieve you."

There is more of it; but enough has been quoted to show the tone, which
is strikingly prophetic of many things of the present day; even a piece
of our reprehensible slang seems foreshadowed in that phrase, "she hath
got such a head." In another letter, this time written by a man, John
Winthrop, we hear that the "Irish creature" whom he and his wife have
for servant is a very plague. She is "lying and unfaithfull; w'd doe
things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her mistress; lye out
of the house anights and have contrivances w'th fellows that have been
stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out of ye cellar for them; saucy
and impudent.... She w'd frequently take her mistresses capps and
stockins, hankerchers etc., to dress herselfe and away without leave
among her companions." So that the servant question was just as
difficult of solution among our great-great-grandmothers as for
ourselves.

Yet from this very condition of servitude blossomed one of the purest
flowers of romance that we find in the history of the early days of our
country,--the story of Agnes Surriage. She was but a servant, a mere
drudge, scrubbing the floor of the tavern at Marblehead, when her beauty
attracted the attention of young Sir Harry Frankland, then collector of
the port of Boston. Noting that she was barefooted, he gave her a crown
to buy a pair of shoes; but on a subsequent visit he saw her again
scrubbing and still shoeless. His question as to the disposition of his
crown elicited the reply that she had b