THE SERVANT GIRL QUESTION.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 170, 22 December 1874, Page 3

THE SERVANT GIRL QUESTION.

The following amusing sketch is extracted from the Queenslandcr :—The expectations of the young ladies who, under the designation of domestic servants, arrive in these colonies from Great Britain, have ever been sufficiently expansive. They have learnt, before condescending to take ship for our shores, that at the antipodes all things go by contraries. Fifteen shillings a week, Irish may apply, every Sunday out, followers allowed, a horse kept for their use, and a mistress to wait upon them, are a few of the reasonable conditions which they understand to be included among their rights. They arrive in good humor, prepared to allow their employers every fair indulgence. Children in the household will not be a bar to engagements ; no objection will be made to polishing the master's boots with black lead on such occasions as stove-cleaning may be going on. All reasonable attention paid to the roasting of the joint, but no responsibility incurred. Company allowed at reasonable intervals, provided they are good for vails. But it is to be feared that this pleasant understanding cannot last much longer. A young man in New Zealand, who deserves to be sacrificed on the outraged altar of domesticity, has raised a flame - which it will take years to extinguish. This scourge of housekeepers, impelled by Satan, passed in review, the inmates of the local immigrant's home, and seeking from the matron an introduction to the prettiest of its temporary inmates, offered her an engagement which employers of the opposite sex can never compete with. His offer consisted of a plain gold ring, a permanency, and his young affections. The thing will spread.

Immigration agents will work the thing up into pamphlets. It will he most effective at their end of the voyage. All the comely girls will argac with themselves that it might just as easily have been their case. Ami it may. An epidemic of marrying out of the depot may set on now that the ice has broken. Immigrant maidens in high shipfed condition, will turn up the nose of scorn at anxious housekeepers desirous of being favored with their assistance in the humble minutiae of domestic life. Every one of them who considers herself to have the slightest claim to personal attractions —that is to say every one of them, without exception—will prefer to wait for the regulation young man to turn up, and invite them to dr'v.3 off in state in his buggy to the; nearest parson on the way to a weil-stocked and snug farm. There is every reason to fear that the regulation young man will be there. Man is distinctly an imitative animal. There is but one consolation, and that a poor one. Immigrants are pouring in very fast. The supply of young men may run short, and the plainer young women be unsatisfied. Then our wives will cheerfully secure for our households a supply of patent safety gorgons.