are
thus left to flourish and increase. We have plenty of groans over these
evils, but scarcely ever a thoughtful consideration of their cause, or
an attempt worth noting to remove or mitigate them.

This is surely cowardly and wrong. This great question, which is really
so engrossing that it is more talked of in the family circle than any
other--this profound and intricate problem, upon the solution of which
the comfort, happiness, and thrift of every household in the land depend
more than upon almost any other--surely demands the most careful study,
and the deepest solicitude of the reformer and philanthropist. The
subject just now is receiving considerable attention in England, and the
journals and periodicals of that country have recently teemed with
articles setting forth the miseries with which English households are
afflicted, owing to the want of good servants. But, unfortunately, from
none of these has the writer been able to extract much assistance in
preparing an answer to the only practical question: How are the evils
of domestic service to be remedied? I quote, however, an extract from a
recent article in _The Victoria Magazine_, in order to show how far the
complaints made in England of the shortcomings of servants run parallel
with those of our own housekeepers. It is to be noted that the writer
confessedly holds a brief for the servants. If the facts are fairly
stated, the relation between a servant in an English family and her
employer differs widely from the like relation with us;

'The prizes in domestic service are few, the blanks many. Ladies
think only of the prizes. Needlewomen and factory girls, when they
turn their attention to domestic service, see the hardworked,
underfed scrub lacking the one condition which goes far to
alleviate the hardest lot, that of personal liberty. People who
have never known what it is to be subject to the caprices of a
petty tyrant, scarcely appreciate this alleviation at its true
value. They expatiate upon the light labors, the abundance, the
freedom from anxiety which characterize the lot of servants in good
places, with an unction worthy of Southern slaveholders. What more
any woman can want they cannot understand. They think it nothing
that a servant has not, from week to week, and month to month, a
moment that she can call her own, a single hour of the day or
night, of which she can say, 'Thi