n, although we
don't get so much of it. The day of a saleswoman or a factory hand
may be long, but when it is done she is her own mistress; but in
service, except when she is actually out of the house, she has no
hour, no minute, when her soul is her own.

2. Hurts to self-respect. One thing that makes housework
unpleasant--chamber-work, for instance, and waiting on table--is
that it is a kind of personal service, one human being waiting on
another. The very thing you would do without a thought in your own
home for your own family seems menial when it is demanded by a
stranger.

3. The very words, "service" and "servant," are hateful. It is all
well enough to talk about service being divine, but that is not the
way the world looks at it.

4. Say that a young woman well brought up undertakes to do
chamber-work; she is obliged to associate with the other girls, no
matter how uncongenial they may be, what may be their language or
personal habits or table manners. If she tries to keep to herself,
the rest think she is taking airs, and combine to make her life
unbearable.

5. Or say she takes a place for general housework; to be alone in
the midst of others is crushing,--quite different from being alone
in one's own lodgings.

6. I suppose a soldier doesn't mind being ordered around by his
captain; but in a family the mistress and maid are so mixed up that
it is much harder to keep the lines from tangling. It takes a very
superior person, on both sides, to do it.

7. I knew an educated woman--a lady--who tried it as a sort of
upper housemaid. The work was easy, the pay good, and she never had
a harsh word; but they just seemed unconscious of her existence.
She said the gentlemen of the house, father and son, would come in
and stand before her to have her take their umbrellas or help them
off with their coats, and sometimes without speaking to her or even
looking at her. There was something so humiliating about it that
she couldn't stand it, but went back to slop shop sewing.

8. Many mistresses have no standard of the amount of work a girl
ought to do. They know nothing about housework themselves. If a
girl is deliberate and saves herself, they call her slow; if she is
ambitious, and gets her work done early, and they see her sitt