On the other hand, it is sometimes difficult for a sensitive master or mistress to give the true reason for their parting with a servant.  A friend of mine had a footman who, through trick, or some defect in his respiratory organs, used to blow like a grampus, and indeed more like a whale, while waiting at table.  It was not a vice, of course, but it was very objectionable, and guests who were bald especially objected to it.  My friend consulted with his butler, who admitted that ’John did blow like a pauper’ (meaning, as I suppose, a porpoise), and undertook to break the subject to him.  It is quite common to find candidates for service very deaf, and if they contrive to pass their ’entrance examination’ (for which no doubt they sharpen their faculties), they stay with you for a month at least with an excellent excuse for making it a holiday, since, whatever you tell them to do they cannot hear and do not do it, or do something else which they like better.  Mistresses who are silent about moral disqualifications are much more so, of course, about physical ones, and have no scruples in ridding themselves of a deaf man.

The worst class of men-servants, perhaps, are those who are said to ‘require a master;’ which means that when he happens to be not at home they neglect everything.  A friend of mine who happened to take a week’s holiday, alone, discovered on his return that his family might almost as well have had no servant at all as the man he left with them; he was generally out, and when at home had not even troubled himself to answer the drawing-room bell.  Some men-servants are always running out; they have ‘just stepped round the corner,’ they say, ‘to post a letter;’ which in nine cases out of ten means to have a dram at the public-house.  The servants who ‘require a master’ sometimes retain their situation with a very selfish one by devoting themselves to his service at the expense of the rest of the family.  ’John suits me very well,’ he says, ‘and thoroughly understands his duties,’ which in this case means the length of the master’s foot.

On the other hand, there are some men-servants who, one would think, ought to belong to the other sex, so utterly ignorant they are of that branch of their duty which they call ‘valeting.’  A lady blessed with a scientific husband, who certainly did not take much notice whether he was ‘valeted’ or not, once complained to his man of his neglect in this particular.  ’When your master comes in, William, you should look after him, and see to his hat and coat, and pay him little attentions.’  So the next time the man of science came in he was not a little surprised by William (who, it is fair to say, came from the country) running up and taking his hat off his head, like some highly-trained retriever.  Happy the master to whom a worse thing has never happened at the hands of his retainer!