The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1880-02-13
Servants in Brittany.

Servants in Brittany.
A few days ago, under press OF Cir |
cumstances, and because could not Sc
cure our regular marketer, I sent my
garcon Thoma to the city ten miles away
with large basket Of strawberries for
sale. He left here about 4 o'clock in the
morning, arrived at the town before the
market hour, sold his straw berries, and
ought to have been back here about 10
A. M Instead of which Thoma, who is q
sailor and a jack-of-all-trades, who wears
a sort of sailors guernsey and talks
Dntois between French and Breton, got
into temptation and fell. Drink did it
all. Drink lays low the greater part of
our poor Bretons. One sees more people
he1plessly drunk, or maudlin drunk,
here far away from towns, in these rural
abodes, than even in England, only they
are for the most part quiet; they neither
swear nor fight. Poor Thoma kicked
quiet over the traces. Perhaps he had
felt too much of the Englishman's yoke;
perhaps he had done enough work for a
month or more. At any rate, he drank,
then engaged himself to marry a dirty
little ugly woman who did his washing
THAT is, when he did not do it himself)
and finally he bolted away with my
strawberry money, and I have not seen
him since. I am grieved, not on account
of the money, for I owed him as much
in wages, but because now my poor
Thoma is gone, 1 have no sailor for my
boat, no one so utterly droll, or SO beau
For Thoma was the most slipperly sailor,
the most idle fellow in the world. He
never did half days work while I hal
him. He waited till my back was
turned, and then left spade, vessel, rope
or wheelbarrow, without attempting
even to put tools away. Only in one
| way was he ever working happily, and
that was the way he knew he was wrong.
Under such circumstances he would
| display an energy worthy of a better
| cause. Once he went with me to buy a
pleasure yacht, but before meeting the
owner he agreed with me that he would
give his opinion in sly winks. We went
on board with the owner, who pointed
out the various good points of the vessel.
constantly appealing to Thoma for con-
firmation, and always being backed up
by my ga,'con, but when the owner
for an instant turned his back, Thoma
screwed up his face into all sorts of con-
tortions, and managed to convey to me
his disproval of the purchase. Our
other servant is also an experiment, and
| failure: The servants difficulty not
only exists here as elsewhere, but it
is aggravated by the independence of the
,eople, and their exceedingly dirty
habits. Very few country girls care to
go out to service, in fact, scarcely at all.
Here in the country we are driven into
the towns for servants. The women
work on the land as hard or harder than
the men; moreover, they prefer thei1
independent life to service; they like
better to dig, or hoe, or weed, or get the
sea-weed for manure, in dirty clothes
and sabots, than to submit to the neat
ness and responsibility of domestic life
They are also in demand for wives. The
peasants marry when mere boys, without
any apparent means of living, trusting
to Providence, and at worst content
with black rye and bread and lick OF
greasy soup. Our Jaquette is jeunat
file (which is the French euphemistit
: never see ffty-fve again, if she be no
quite sixty. Yet when I asked if she
were UeuUe, ] was told she was jea1'a,
file. She is as honest as daylight, which
is more than can say for most Bretons
who are pilferers, if not robbers, a
least in these parts. She is economical
, to fault, wastes nothing, almost eat
nothing, keeps the men on soup made o
greasy water and bits of bread, and put
, even the water used in cooking into tht
, universal soup. The other day she sen
in peas with lot of green-lookins
water, which one of the party disliking
took it into the kitchen to pour it away
Jacquette requested as favor that i
) might be put into her own particula
/ plate of soup, and it was. But Jacquett'
never washes, or, if she does wash, sh'
! does not conquer her dirt. She is dirty
in person, and dirty in cooking her food
She is a bad cook, and smokes every
thing she cooks. She potters about al
day, yet she does not even keep th'
, rooms clean. Upon the ladies fall almos
all the household work. Why then d.
we keep Jacquette? First and foremos
, because we cannot get any better; next
, we like her very much for her goot
, qualities, and lastly, because when once
we told her to go in week, the dea'
old thing was SO meek, so patient, SO en-
during, that we almost wept for her and
kept her on.-C07nltiH Magazine.