“Servants are a trial nowadays,” said the farmer, striking a light and dressing.  “You can hardly get ’em or pay ’em enough, and then you’re supposed to do everything yourself and never say a word about anything.  You’re not master in your own house any more, and you can’t do enough of your own errands to keep from quarrels and from being run down.”

“But you can’t let this go on,” said his wife; “it’s happening too often.  Only last week he went off on two sprees; you know he drew his pay before Ash Wednesday.  I’m not thinking of you alone, but also of Uli.  If nothing’s said to him he’ll think he’s got a right to go on so, and will keep on worse and worse, and then we’ll have to take it on our consciences; for masters are masters after all, and let folks say what they will about the new fashion, that it’s nobody’s business what the servants do out of working hours, we’re masters in our own house just the same, and we’re responsible to God and men for what we allow in our house and what we overlook in our servants.  Then too I’m thinking of the children.  You must take him into the sitting-room after breakfast, and read him the riot act.”

You must know that there prevails on many farms, especially those which belong to the real farmer aristocracy—­i.e., those which have for a long time been handed, down in the same family, so that family customs have been established and family respectability is cherished—­the very pleasant custom of causing absolutely no quarrel, no violent scene, which could attract the neighbors’ attention in any way.  In proud calm the house stands amid the green trees; with calm, grave demeanor its indwellers move about and in it, and over the tree-tops sounds at most the neighing of the horses, never the voices of men.  There is little noisy rebuke.  Man and wife never rebuke each other in public; and mistakes of the servants they often ignore, or make, as it were in passing, a remark, let fall merely a word or a hint, which reaches only the ear for which it is intended.  When something unusual occurs or the measure is full, they call the sinner into the sitting-room as unostentatiously as possible, or seek him out while he is working alone, and “read him the riot act,” as the saying is; and for this the master has usually prepared himself carefully.  He performs this duty in perfect calm, quite like a father, keeps nothing from the sinner, not even the bitterest truth, but gives him a just hearing too, and puts before him the consequences of his misdoings with respect to his future destiny.

[Illustration:  JEREMIAS GOTTHELF]

And when the master is done he is content, and the affair is settled to this extent, that neither the rebuked one nor his fellows can detect the least thing in the conduct of the master—­no bitterness, nor vehemence, nor anything else.  These reprimands are mostly of good effect by virtue of the prevailing fatherly tone, the calmness of their delivery, and their considerately chosen setting.  Of the self-control and calm serenity in such houses one can scarcely form a conception.