her doom. She was sent back to her friends in the country; and when she
was gone we heard of many of her faults. She expressed herself, when
displeased, in language that I shall not repeat. As for the beer and
meat, there was no mistake about them. But apres? Can I have the heart
to be very angry with that poor jade for helping another poorer jade out
of my larder? On your honor and conscience, when you were a boy, and
the apples looked temptingly over Farmer Quarringdon's hedge, did you
never--? When there was a grand dinner at home, and you were sliding,
with Master Bacon, up and down the stairs, and the dishes came out, did
you ever do such a thing as just to--? Well, in many and many a respect
servants are like children. They are under domination. They are subject
to reproof, to ill temper, to petty exactions and stupid tyrannies not
seldom. They scheme, conspire, fawn, and are hypocrites. "Little boys
should not loll on chairs." "Little girls should be seen, and not
heard;" and so forth. Have we not almost all learnt these expressions of
old foozles: and uttered them ourselves when in the square-toed state?
The Eton master, who was breaking a lance with our Paterfamilias of
late, turned on Paterfamilias, saying, He knows not the nature and
exquisite candor of well-bred English boys. Exquisite fiddlestick's
end, Mr. Master! Do you mean for to go for to tell us that the relations
between young gentlemen and their schoolmasters are entirely frank and
cordial; that the lad is familiar with the man who can have him flogged;
never shirks his exercise; never gets other boys to do his verses; never
does other boys' verses; never breaks bounds; never tells fibs--I
mean the fibs permitted by scholastic honor? Did I know of a boy who
pretended to such a character, I would forbid my scapegraces to keep
company with him. Did I know a schoolmaster who pretended to believe
in the existence of many hundred such boys in one school at one time,
I would set that man down as a baby in knowledge of the world. "Who was
making that noise?" "I don't know, sir."--And he knows it was the boy
next him in school. "Who was climbing over that wall?" "I don't know,
sir."--And it is in the speaker's own trousers, very likely, the glass
bottle-tops have left their cruel scars. And so with servants. "Who ate
up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this
morning?" "O dear me! sir, it was John, who went away last month!"--or,