Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-07-03

There is no department of American
life so cursed with ignorance and lack
of skill as that of domestic service.
There are thousands of families in this
city-and the same fact obtains in other
cities-who have no satisfactory service
from years end to years end. The ser
wants come and go, and lie and waste,
and spoil and quarrel and steal They
have no loyalty. no faithfulness. no
| carefulness, no skill to do the duties
which they undertake and which they
loudly and confidently profess to under
stand. Their ignorance is only matched
by their insolence. They have no dis
position to learn, no ambition to become
excellent, no desire to please, and no
wish to remain for any considerable
| length of time in one lace The sailors
bOarding-houses from which the men are
dragged and shipped for every brief vow
age, do not seem to be more demOralized
and hopeless places than many of those
holes so strangely misnamed ''intelli-
genCe offices, from which scores of girls
are sent into families every day-girls
who are known to be inefficient, and
who are expected back in search of an
other place before the first month is out.
The waste of fuel in rich mems kitchens
would keep all the poor people warm.
The food thrown away, or ruined by
recllessness and ignorance, would feed
tens of thousands. Foreigners wonder
that the American family takes to the
boarding-hous and the hotel, but the
secret of this strange liking for hotel
life is in the wretched service of domes-
tic life. Women get tired and discour-
aged with housekeeping, and give it up.
If we could see any tendency to i'm
provement in domestic service, we should
not trouble ourselves to write this arti-
Gle; but there is no such tendency APP
parent. We are every year more thor
oughly satisfied that there must be some
concert of action among the ladies of
the city on various points before there
can be any improvement. These points
are, first, that no lady shall give a ser
want a certificate of character or skill
that oVerstates the facts in the slightest
degree second, that no servant shall
be engaged who cannot bring a satisfac-
tory certificate from her last place or
give competent references; third. that
when a mistress finds herself imposed
upon by false representations she i'm
mediately dismiss her servant, so that.
at last, all incompetent servants be
driven into places where their wages
shall bear some proper relation to the |
value of their work
SO long as poor and dishonest servants
are tolerated, and find no motive to make |
themselves better, they will not become |
better. The experience of our house I
keepers has proved this. A poor servant
who knows that she can walk out of one /
good house directly into another viii not /
try to become excellent. She gets used 1
to floating, and does not object TO If. /
There is pleasant excitement in it. to /
which she becomes accustomed. There /
are hundreds, if not thousands, of ser
wants in New York who never stay three
months in place, and are in no way
unhappy about it i; and the good house
keepers of the city are responsible for !
their existence. If their credentials
were properly looked into they would
find themselves driven into inferior nIacee
or made humble and willing to learn.
we do not know why it is supposed
that cooking, as an art, needs never to
be learned. Good cooking is among the
best and most useful of all the arts. We
are more dependent upon it for health.
comfort, and the economical administra-
tioh OF home life than upon any other
art whatever; yet not one In one hun
dred OF our cooks ever learns her bust
ness or ever thinks of learning it. We
are driven to professional bakers for our
bread, and to the confectioners for our
pastry, cake, buildings and creams. Our
lady OF the kitchen calls herself a cook
IL she can roast joint so that 1t can be