She was Afraid of the Maoris

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 103, 18 February 1893, Page 4

She was Afraid of the Maoris

(Contributed.) The trials of the mistress of a house are heavy and manifold, not the least of them being the scarcity and uncertain temper of domestic servants. If there are more than a couple of welUgrown children in the house the "young lady" won't come, or if she does, won't stay ; she can't iron shirts, and won't hold the baby. She objects to visitors, except to herself; won't allow the lady of the house to use her own kitchen to make cakes in for her day "at home," and generally acts as an autocrat. It is extremely hard to get a girl to accept a position as "help." even at fifteen shillings a week, and harder to keep her when you have persuadpd her to come to you. After a few days or weeks the old trouble has all to t c gone orer again, as Sophonisba has had an urgent letter to go home and nurse her mother, or some other equally imperative call to quit your house at an hour's notice, with the week's wash half finished and with the place in an awful state of untidiness. There is no help for it, so you have to smile and hand the young lady her honorarium, and look for a successor who is hard to find. When a young lady replies to your advertisement or is sent by the keeper of a Registry Office to see if the place will suit her, she cross-questions tbe woman of the house like a lawyer as to work, wages, and holidays, etc., but resents any attempt of the latter to extract from the candidate any information as to her capabilities or antecedents. One young lady when told she would be expected to take the baby out occasion* ally replied "I'm neither a baby jumper nor a perambulator." The latest good thing, however, in connection with the quest for a 'general' occurred quite re« cently when a lady engaged a girl in Feilding, through a friend, to come to Wanganui. The day came but not the young lady. A telegram was therefore sent to the friend at Feilding asking why the girl had not kept her promise. The an3wer was as follows -. — ,, Girl won't go Wanganui. She is new chum, Afraid, ot the MacrisJ" Poor timid stranger in a strange land ! As sbe is Scotch and | has no doubt often seen the "braw lad- j dies" in their kilts she oughtn't to be ! afraid of the Maoris, whose hakas are not more terrifying to timorous folks from south of the Tweed than are tho : national dances of the timid one's native land, especially when executed to the strident tones of a bagpipe. No doubt this poor girl's unnecessary fear of the ' Maoris will wear off in time and Wan- j ganui be made happy in her arrival here as an addition to our all too scanty female population, few of whom are frightened of Maoris, or pakehas either for the matter of that.— Wanganui Herald.