German Servant Maids.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 407, 2 October 1889, Page 6

German Servant Maids.

The German servant gii-1 has no bangs or bangles, nor fur-lined cloaks, nor fourbutton kid gloves. She is squareshouldered, heavy featured and large limbed. She ia neither quick, clean nor intelligent, but she can work. She has the strength of an ox and is always Milling to use it. Most servant girls in Gorman cities are peasants. Daughters of the poorer toirnbred families usually become factory hands, shop girls or waitresses. The conservative peasants, however, with their old prejudices in favour of everything feudal, prefer domeptic service for their children to any other employment. As soon as the peasant's daughter is fourteen or fifteen years old she learns how to split wood, hoe potatoes and plant cabbages. She milks the cow before breakfast, hibches her to a plough after breakfast and often turns furrows all the morning under the direction of her father, who in the meanwhile smokes a pipe and icstp. She mows hay and digs water trencho?. During the harvost she carries great baskctfuls of vegetables from the fields to the barn on her back. When her younger sister becomes old enough to help her parents to work the little farm, however, the eldest danghter loses her grip on her^ father's heart. She is regarded by him as iin encumbrance, for nothing is more useless in the eyes of a German peasant than a grown daughter who does not earn her living. Therefore, if no Hans or Fritz wishes her to be his helpmate in raising cabbage and potatoes she must go into domestic service in the city. Like almost all novices in an occupation on the Continent, she serves an apprenticeship. For several months she receives no wages, nor does the deserve any, for her ignorance is phenomenal. She has never walked on a carpet before and doesn't know a napkin from a dishcloth or a coal bucket ironi a kettle ! She smashes crockery right and left. She blacks the Herr's patent leather shoes and oils his rubber boots. She puts the table spread on the tloor and the rug on the table. In foot, she is as strange to most of the furniture and customs in a comfortable houso as a Persion or Indian. She learns slowly and laboriously, but she never forgets.