would scarcely
have noticed. And was not the waiter a man and a fellow voter? What
distinction of class have we in this country? It is true that the
property qualification we have discarded in our political system we have
retained as our test of social position. Indeed, no abstract rights of
man can make up the difference between rich and poor. But Fortune is
nowhere so blind nor so busy in twirling her wheel; and our two classes
are so apt to change places, that frequently the only difference between
the master and the footman who stands behind him, is the difference of
capital. And Europe is treading the same democratic path as ourselves,
limping along after us as fast as her old legs will carry her. The time
will come when the class from which we have so long enlisted recruits
for our _batteries de cuisine_ will find some other career better suited
to their expanded views.

What then? Do you suggest that we may lay a hand upon the colored
element, after the example of our honored President? But

'While flares the epaulette like flambeau
On Corporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'

can you expect either of these distinguished officers to leave the
service of the United States for ours? What with intelligent
contrabandism, emancipation, the right of suffrage, and the right to
ride in omnibuses, we fear that their domestic usefulness will be sadly
impaired.

Oh for machinery! automaton flunkies, requiring only to be wound up and
kept oiled! What a housekeeping Utopia! Thomson foreshadowed a home
paradise of this kind when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence:'

'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,
Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'

But as yet invention has furnished no reapers and mowers for within
doors. We have only dumb waiters; poor, creaking things, that break and
split, like their flesh-and-blood namesakes, and distribute the smell of
the kitchen throughout the house. Heine once proposed a society to
ameliorate the condition of the rich. He must have meant a model
intelligence office. I wish it had been established, for we may all need
its aid.

What are we to do when we come to the last of the servants? Darwin says
that the _Formica rufescens_ would perish without its slaves; we are
almost as dependent as these confederate ants. Our social civilization
is based upon servants. Certainly, the refinements of life, as we
understand it, could not exist Without them, and it is diffi