servants change with it. In the days of our great-grandmothers, the
traditions of the patriarchal principle and the subtile influences
of feudalism had not died out. 'Servitude' had scarcely lost its
etymological significance, and there was something at least of the
best elements of slavery in the mutual relation of master and
servant. There was an identification of interests; wages were
small; hiring for a year under penal obligations was the rule of
domestic service; and facilities for changing situations were rare
and legally abridged. It was as in married life; as the parties to
the contract were bound to make the best of each other, they did
make the best of each other. Servants served well, because it was
their interest to do so; masters ruled well and considerately, for
the same practical reason. Add to this that the class of hirers was
relatively small, while the class of hired and the opportunities of
choice were relatively large. These conditions are now reversed. As
education has advanced, the social condition of the class from
which servants are taken has been elevated, and it is thought to be
something of a degradation to serve at all. 'I am a servant, not a
slave,' is the form in which Mary Jane asserts her independence;
and she is only in a state of transition to the language of her
American cousin, who observes, 'I am a help, not a servant.' It is
quite true that there are no good servants nowadays, at least none
of the old type; and the day is not perhaps so very distant when
there will be no servants at all.'

The servant classes of France, Germany, and the other Continental
countries, seem to be, to a great extent, free from the faults that
beset those of England and America. A recent number of _Bell's Weekly
Messenger_ thus discusses this difference:

'The truth is that among the Celtic and Sclavonian families service
is felt to be honorable; those engaged in it take it up as a
respectable and desirable condition. They are as willing to
acknowledge it as the physician, the lawyer, or the clergyman is to
admit and be proud of their own. A French female servant, at least
away from Paris, wears a dress which marks at once what she is. She
is not ashamed of her condition, and nowhere is there such real
attachment between servants and their employers