CONCERNING CHAMBER. MAIDS.

Westport Times, Volume VII, Issue 1067, 29 April 1873, Page 4

CONCERNING CHAMBER. MAIDS.

Against all chambermaids of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the •curse of bachelordom ! Because, They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the gasburner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the ancient and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book aloft, in an amcomfortable position, to keep ibe light from dazzling your eyes. When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the morning, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but, glorying in tbeir absolute sovereignty, and uupitying your helplessness, they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the pang their tyranny will cause you. Always after that, when they find yon have transposed the pillows, they undo your work, and thus defy and seem to embitter the life that God has given you. If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position in any other way they move the bed.

If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They do it on purpose. They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It is because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude ana make wild sweeps for them with the bootjack, and swear. They always put the matchbox in Home other place. They hunt up a new place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable thing, where the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that thing, groping in the dark, and get yourself iuto trouble

They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in, in the night, you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in the morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the slopbucket by the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in at midnight, or thereabouts, you will fall over that rocking-chair and you will proceed toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will disgust you. They like that. No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it say there. They will take and move it the first chance they get. It is their nature. And, besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and contrary this way. They would die if they could'nt be tillains. They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on the floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire with your valuable manuscripts. If there is one particular old scrap that you are more down upon than any other, and which you are gradually wearing your life out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains you possibly can in that direction, but it won't be of any use, because they will always fetch that old scrap back and put it in the same old place again every time. It does them good. And they use up as much hair oil as any six men. If charged with purloining the same, they lie about it. "What do they care about a hereafter ? Absolutely nothing. If you leave the key in the door for convenience sake, they wiii carry it down to ihe office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the vile pretence of trying to protect your property from thieves ; but actually tbey do it because they want to make you tramp back down stairs after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something. In which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide. They keep always trying to make your bed before you got up, thus destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you ; but after you get up, they don't como any more till nert clay. They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out of pure cusaedness, and nothing else. Chambermaids aro dead to every human instinct. I have cursed them in behalf of outraged bachelordom. They deserve it If I can get a bill through the Legislature abolishing chambermaids, I mean to da it.—Mark Twain.