DOMESTIC SERVANTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 940, 13 July 1903, Page 2

DOMESTIC SERVANTS.

(To the Editor Gisborne Times.) Sir,—l presume your valuable paper is circulated for the purpose of placing before people the facts, and eliciting by correspondence on various topic, the malady which ails and the needed remedy ; and this leads me to write against the unfair criticism of one who will never •be a picked) agitator by the slavey army, as their champion and leader. 1 refer to Matron's letter in your issue of Saturday. I would like to ask her if, because one dog is mad, ,we should consider all the others are, or liable to be so. I refer in an analagous manner to the extremely uncommon ‘“maid ” who wouldn’t be a boot-black as well as a bottle washer, and who would rather thump the grand pianoforte than clean the scales of herrings. I know of a case, Mrs Matron, where a mistress placed the task before her “ slavey. ” of polishing fifteen pairs of boots, arranged with most annoying exactitude, and packed close together, so that they would not look so many, ; and these hoots had to be done well ! But the most aggravating part was that the children who fitted these boots just wore them to put mud on them. This was in the winter, and is not exaggerated ; nor .was it a joke. I suppose if the maid had stuck out from the first, like the maids who did so in Matron’s observations, she would have been playing the piano now, and the children would have had to clean the boots. But no, this girl, in the anguish of her fifteen-fold trial cleaned them like a lamb—and all for the sake of her mistress. But enough of this one ease. It is true, and if necessary, I can produce the boots.

' To the observant eye of the 3 young men, Matron presents a some--3 ,what lugubrious and mournful picI ture in the fact that throughout her J vast experience here and in the antipodes, the servant girls and maids of all work are a disagreeable, dis- | resfectful, unwilling, and dissatisfied j lot. Also, Matron, by her declam--1 ation on us poor girls, would try, and make out, in fact asserts, that there is not one in ten of us satisfied or content with having more liberty than our misters and mistresses. I can assure Mrs Matron that such ‘ persons as herself are debtors to the “ slavey. ” for many, advantageous circumstances of living, and such any fair-minded lady will recognise: I think it would have to be a maid with a very, uncommonly wide experience, as ’ well as a very varied one, who could hold the tack while Mrs' Matron was hitting it; or, in less metaphorical language, Matron would have to go back to England to find a maid who could live and work under the reign of herself. In conclusion, I wish to feebly applaud the efforts of mistresses in making the labors of their maids more congenial, but to more loudly applaud, and that with vigor, the self-sacrificing spirit of the humble slavey, girl, in endeavoring to preserve, under sometimes trying circumstances, amiable relationships between mistress and maid, and to bring sweeter content by exerting her good and gracious influence.—l am, etc., LOVE AT. HOME.