But in America all is undefined.  In the first place, there is no class who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in.  It is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher; your best servants always have something else in view as soon as they have laid by a little money,—­some form of independence which shall give them a home of their own is constantly in mind.  Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dress-maker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own.  Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till female trades and callings are all overstocked.  We are continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed needle-women, of the exactions and extortions practised on the frail sex in the many branches of labor and trade at which they try their hands; and yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin and starvation rather than make up their minds to permanent domestic service.  Now what is the matter with domestic service?  One would think, on the face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a comfortable room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good board and lodging, and steady, well-paid wages, would certainly offer more attractions than the making of shirts for tenpence, with all the risks of providing one’s own sustenance and shelter.

I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true position of a servant under our democratic institutions that domestic service is so shunned and avoided in America, that it is the very last thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living.  It is more the want of personal respect toward those in that position than the labors incident to it which repels our people from it.  Many would be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to place themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly wounded by the implication of an inferiority which does not follow any other kind of labor or service in this country but that of the family.

There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance which democracy inspires in the working-class.  Many families think of servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all that allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as possible.  Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious ones,—­and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in the house.  Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their domestics with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent;