Do you see—­I imagine I do myself—­in these little instances, a tinge of humor?  Ellen’s heart is breaking for handsome Jeames of Buckley Square, whose great legs are kneeling, and who has given a lock of his precious powdered head, to some other than Ellen.  Henry is preparing the sauce for his master’s wild-ducks while the engines are squirting over his own little nest and brood.  Lift these figures up but a story from the basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone.  We may be en pleine tragedie.  Ellen may breathe her last sigh in blank verse, calling down blessings upon James the profligate who deserts her.  Henry is a hero, and epaulettes are on his shoulders.  Atqui sciebat, &c., whatever tortures are in store for him, he will be at his post of duty.

You concede, however, that there is a touch of humor in the two tragedies here mentioned.  Why?  Is it that the idea of persons at service is somehow ludicrous?  Perhaps it is made more so in this country by the splendid appearance of the liveried domestics of great people.  When you think that we dress in black ourselves, and put our fellow-creatures in green, pink, or canary-colored breeches; that we order them to plaster their hair with flour, having brushed that nonsense out of our own heads fifty years ago; that some of the most genteel and stately among us cause the men who drive their carriages to put on little Albino wigs, and sit behind great nosegays—­I say I suppose it is this heaping of gold lace, gaudy colors, blooming plushes, on honest John Trot, which makes the man absurd in our eyes, who need be nothing but a simple reputable citizen and in-door laborer.  Suppose, my dear sir, that you yourself were suddenly desired to put on a full dress, or even undress, domestic uniform with our friend Jones’s crest repeated in varied combinations of button on your front and back?  Suppose, madam, your son were told, that he could not get out except in lower garments of carnation or amber-colored plush—­would you let him? . . .  But as you justly say, this is not the question, and besides it is a question fraught with danger, sir; and radicalism, sir; and subversion of the very foundations of the social fabric, sir. . . .  Well, John, we won’t enter on your great domestic question.  Don’t let us disport with Jeames’s dangerous strength, and the edge-tools about his knife-board:  but with Betty and Susan who wield the playful mop, and set on the simmering kettle.  Surely you have heard Mrs. Toddles talking to Mrs. Doddles about their mutual maids.  Miss Susan must have a silk gown, and Miss Betty must wear flowers under her bonnet when she goes to church if you please, and did you ever hear such impudence?  The servant in many small establishments is a constant and endless theme of talk.  What small wage, sleep, meal, what endless scouring, scolding, tramping on messages fall to that poor Susan’s lot; what indignation at the little kindly passing word with the grocer’s young man, the pot-boy, the chubby butcher!  Where such things will end, my dear Mrs. Toddles, I don’t know.  What wages they will want next, my dear Mrs. Doddles, &c.