The Portland daily press., 1865-10-23
u.. uo,,r write e0t a Hired oirlp

felt in domestic circles much wider we appre-
bend than this paper reaches. 1t almost seems
as if the indispensable Bridget had defnitively
gone to the factories or got married or other
wise stepped out for good, and that we must
manage our household order without hef soou
offices henceforth.
As education, and the general diffusion OF
luxury increase the ambition OF women as wen
as men tc he employers of servants rather than
to he servants. or at least to be their own mas
ters and mistresses, constantly increases also
Under the steady tuition of democratic ideas
tbe lowest class in the scale of laborers,--a
big class of about four Millions class that
for our national good rcpute and national safe
ty ought never to have been, have just gradu-
ated from the extinct institution of slavery, and
entered upon the humble curriculum of SER
wants. The whole mass feels the upward i'm
pulse, and more than as many are packing up
to forsake forever employments which these
have threatened to monopolize or degrade.
In the last generation it was not at all in
compatible with native American dignity for
young girl with more health than fortune to
seek domestic service in the family of some
notable and thrifty housekeeper, from whose
well-reputed skill as cook, baker, brewer, soap
maker, dairy-woman, laundress, tailoress, en-
broiderer, she might acquire all those essen
tial arts of life preliminary to setting up her
own humble establishment. She was received
into the family as an equal, sat at the common
table, unless detained by the requirements of
the cooking, had her chair by the evening can
die and hearth, and dipped her oar into the
general conversation without asking leave or
making apology. She mingled in the fireside
merry-makings, went out to the cuttings, husk-
ings and dances, and sat in comedy dress and
department in the family pew. She had her
turn at the book that was read around the
house, and if no other objection could be made
oher, than that she ,Corked for alving, that did
not always weigh much with the mistress son,
looking about him for wife, especially If she
happened to be pretty, which was the case
about every other time
We have considerably changed all that
We build our houses very deep into the ground,
and very high up into the sky, so as to have a
subterranean place where Bridget shall scrub
and scrape by day in the steam and darkness,
till her face grows red and her hands parboil-
ed, with murderous perpendicular back stairs
leading up four stories under the roof, where
she may cool off at night and regain an inter
esting complexion. Occasionally bell may
summon her into the middle regions of light
and warmth where her presence is permitted
only SO long as she is ministering to the wants
of some member of the household. For the
family to eat with her, to sit with her, to talk
with her is no more en- regle, than for two
castles in India to do the same together.
Ann Maria comes down from the country
with her box and umbrella, little awkward
and green, but full of independence. She goes
through this grand routine, running up stairs
or down stairs to answer bells for three DAVIS
and then she losses her head and is off for the
factories. My lady says in substance: good
radiance, for she thinks she was pert and sharp
tempered. And truly it must be owned for
ourown beloved New England that it does
not breed all the Christian or even human vir-
tues. Much as we hate aristocracy and slay-
cry, we have to own that they have schooled
races ruder than ours into habits of courteous
speech and decorous manners, that books and
The society ofreined people can scarcely teach
us.
But meantime what is mistress going to do
Eor help?
The supply not increasing there is no help
for it but to diminish the demand. This will
come about. First, the enormous prices of
living, OF mere living, to say nothing of the
equally enormous demands, which social rank
imposes upon everybody to keep up certain
superfuous style Of living, interdict marriage
to thousands, who under just scale of prices
and simpler customs would marry and estab-
lish families and homes. The same causes
will drive many with narrow incomes from
necessity, and many others with small families
20 escape the cares of housekeeping, into
hose dismal substitutes for homes, hotels and
promscuous boarding houses. But what shall
De done Tor the not wealthy people toe. much
mcumbered to change from one mode of life to
another, who remember the salutary in
duence of the privacy of the family circle in
which they were reared and are willing to sac
rifice much else to retain it? Something we
think. "
What is the economy of having cook shop
attached to every dwelling2 Go into the near
est market shop this morning Fifty families
cater here daily for their dinners. You will
zee fifty little parcels of beef, mutton, pork,
chickens, fish &C., each flanked with its little
mess of vegetables. But the dinner is not vet
at more than half its cost These fifty bas-
kets at the meat-shop involve fifty kitchens.
fifty cook stoves with their cumberous and
costly ware, fifty fires lighted in dog-days with
coal at fifteen dollars per ton, fifty cooks, and
perhaps in addition fifty, (but we win say
twenty-five) red-faced and cross wives.
Now if we had in some situation convenient
70 the nifty families, cook-shop for them all,
managed by skillful man with the necessary
AID, the kitchen, kitchen fire, the clutter OF
pots and pans, and the hard terms of the in
dignant sook might all be saved. Madam
might work IN her garden, sew for her chill
dren, entertain her friends or read the Atlantic
Monthly till the clock struck one, when she
has nothing to do but to send boy or girl
round the corner and bring in the entire din
ner of the family and guests hot and hot in
five minutes. 1t cannot be but that our ex-
perienced and accomplished artist, who may
arrive at the fame Of Soyer> can cook a
much better dinner than we can at home; for
in the first place he is man, and as a dinner
is generally SO much more to man than it is
to woman, SO man may be expected to at
tain higher skill in whatever ministers to his
appetite; and then all his apparatus and appli-
ances may be of the best possible kind, so that
ehe accidents of asnderdone or ouerdone that