House servant

“ If you go into a house, you can soon tell the difference between the family and the servants. A son comes home in the evening; he goes all over the house—perhaps talks about the letters that have come in, and wants to know all that has been going on in the family during his absence. It is very different with a servant, who perhaps does not leave the kitchen or the servants’ hall all day except when duty requires it. ”

“ In about one third of all the families with servants men are employed in some capacity about the house; in one family in every seven the number of servants is the same as the number of persons in the family or exceeds it, while in the average family one servant renders service to every two persons. ”

“ You are to understand that the solitary servant, in these houses, is usually cook, house-maid, and waiter. When the lodger keeps no servant, she answers his bell, as well as the street door knocker, and goes on all his errands that do not extend beyond a proper distance. ”

“ In small families where only one female servant is kept, the servant of all work will be required to do all the work of the house, which in large establishments is very properly divided into several departments. ”

“ When any servant comes home drunk, and cannot appear, you must all join in telling your master, that he is gone to bed very sick; upon which your lady will be so good-natured as to order some comfortable thing for the poor man, or maid.
“When your master and lady go abroad together, to dinner, or on a visit for the evening, you need leave only one servant in the house, or even one black-guard boy to answer [46] at the door, and attend the children, if there be any. Who is to stay at home is to be determined by long and short cuts ”

“ Require all house servants to be quiet in their movements, not to slam doors or rattle china. Impress upon them the importance of dressing neatly. Teach them to treat all comers with politeness; to answer the door-bell promptly and to thoroughly understand whatever rules you may have about being "engaged" or "not at home." ”

“ First Servant Such a house broke!
So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not
One friend to take his fortune by the arm,
And go along with him! ”

“ D, a housekeeper with a large family, moderate income, and ambitious tastes, employs one general servant and requires, in addition to the ordinary duties of such a servant, dining-room and chamber service. ”

“ Likewise, domestic servants are excluded by some of these acts, who are they? "A household servant is one who dwells under the same roof with the family under circumstances making him a member thereof." ”

“ Servants must, of course, be had in every well-ordered household—but too many of them constitute a veritable hive of discord and worry. Why have huge houses at all? Why have enormous domestic retinues? A small house is always cosiest, and often prettiest, and the fewer servants, the less trouble. ”

“ Some of the customs of the household, in regard to servants, are quite striking to a foreigner. When the master of the house starts out each morning, besides the wife and children who see him off, all the servants who are not especially occupied—a goodly number, sometimes—come to the front door and bow down to bid him good-by. ”

“ In the home where guests are frequently entertained and where the hostess holds many formal social functions, servants are essential.
Every family that can afford to do so, should have one, or two, or more servants according to social requirements and the appointments of the house. They should be well instructed in their duties and they should be expected to carry them out faultlessly. ”

“ If the management of a house be urged as more important than the management of an immortal mind, the situation of a housekeeper would have been more suitable than that of a wife or mother to the woman who offers this excuse. ”

“ Like a layman, he has his own domicile and fireside, his parsonage in the country with a garden, or an apartment in town—in any event, his own home and household, a servant or housekeeper, who is often either his mother or a sister ”

“ Housekeeping was relatively a small matter; but with the habits of economy, which rendered the new home possible, they will not employ additional help. The work which is left over by the servant falls to the mistress. ”

“ Like the servants. I have kept my eyes open almost from the first day of my life. I have observed my mother's household and other people's—I speak of the great middle-classes, mainly—and [pg 134] my unalterable conviction is, that every faithful wife who aspires to be housekeeper too, becomes the servant of her servants. They rule not only her but all her thoughts. Her life circles round them. She can talk of nothing else. Whether she visits, or is visited, servants are the staple of her conversation. ”

“ Indeed, the situation of a housekeeper, in almost every family, is of great importance.—She superintends nearly the whole of the domestic [52] establishment,—has generally the controul and direction of the servants, particularly of the female servants—has the care of the household furniture and linen—of all the grocery—dried and other fruits, spices, condiments, soap, candles, and stores of all kinds, for culinary and other domestic uses. ”

“ In all that has been said there has been no attempt to consider the large establishment where there is a housekeeper who assumes the duties of the mistress of the home in the way of ordering meals, directing servants, and looking after all the details of the household. Such establishments are not plentiful enough to be considered in a book of this scope. It is in the homes where but one servant or at the most two or three are kept that problems of the sort we have touched upon present themselves for solution. In such homes these problems are often matters of daily or weekly consideration. ”

“ We housekeepers all know that this servant question is just as pressing as any upon which we have yet touched, and it is one that is with us every day. We cannot rid ourselves of it, even if we would, because it involves so much of our domestic comfort and happiness. ”

“ Believe an old practitioner; whoever, out of malice to a fellow-servant, carries a tale to his master, will be ruined by a general confederacy against him.
“The general place for rendezvous for all the servants, both in winter and summer, is the kitchen: there the grand affairs of the family ought to be consulted; whether they concern the stable, the dairy, the pantry, the laundry, the cellar, the nursery, the dining-room, or my lady’s chamber: there, as in your own proper element, you can laugh, and squall, and romp in full security. ”

“ It is not to be supposed that a domestic servant occupied the humble position she held in previous times; for a well-appointed household requiring at least four servants, in the nineteenth century would at this period 8need but one. ”

“ The average American household which employs servants—and there is a surprisingly large proportion of the sum total who keep no servant at all—is contented with one, two, or, at the most, three servants. The third may be a nurse, as I have said, or a laundress, who, besides her washing and ironing, does the chamber-work and thus leaves the waitress free for her especial tasks in the dining-room and for the duties of a parlor-maid. The laundress may also wash windows or help in other cleaning. ”

“ Why need there be three servants to every house, when servants are the greatest drain to the fortune of a family, worse even than the dress and society of its lady members, or than the tobacco of the men? ”

“ I have to go to the city to-morrow to get a new staff of servants—though I can assure you they 'll never give me such fine work as you girls have done. But that was fairyland, and we must now drop back to a prosaic reality in the matter of house-keeping. ”

“ The number of men-servants in a family varies according to the wealth and position of the master, from the owner of the ducal mansion, with a retinue of attendants, at the head of which is the chamberlain and house-steward, to the occupier of the house, where a single footman is the only male retainer. ”

“ A domestic servant is a member of the master's household, and the obligation of obedience extends to what concerns domestic discipline, as well as to the special work which was expressly undertaken by the contract. ”

“ There might always, in a country-house, be one or more young girls, according to the size of the establishment; to be placed under older servants, or be instructed by the mistress herself, in all household occupations, from the hardest work and most simple offices, to the more delicate arts of housekeeping, including needle-work. ”

“ But in a very large house with numerous rooms, where many social functions are held and many house parties are given by the hostess a full corps of servants is required. Each one should have certain, definite tasks to perform every day.
In the luxurious American home, seven servants are usually employed. They are a butler, a chauffeur, a parlor maid, a cook, a laundress, a nurse-maid and a chamber-maid. A lady's maid and a valet are sometimes added. A footman, laundry-maid and scullery-maid are also added, sometimes, to the corps of servants. ”

“ Therefore the servants who read these sentences, and the women who have servants in their households, should interpret the word in the spirit it is written—that of true American courtesy and respect.
Domestic service requires a certain character lacking in most other professions. As a servant, you care for the things of others and it should be done with as much attention and regard as if they were your own. ”

“ The servants begin hours before you rise, the children of the house take up the strain, master and mistress sing over their cookery and ledger-writing, stable-boy and gardener sing over their work without. Strive as you may, you cannot get away from the sound. ”

“ Indeed, the old housekeeper has the reputation, among the servants and the villagers, of being passing rich; and there is a japanned chest of drawers, and a large iron-bound coffer in her room, which are supposed, by the house-maids, to hold treasures of wealth. ”

“ A housekeeper possessed of such facilities, as a ground-work for other qualifications, must be a desirable acquisition in a family where the mistress is of rank and consideration, and feels herself superior to the management of her own household affairs. ”

“ Having, in the arrangement of her house, and in the choice of her servants, kept in view the two main objects, namely, the comfort of her family, and the care of her purse, the young housekeeper ought to commence her career, by strictly adhering to order and regularity in the {8}performance of those duties which devolve peculiarly upon herself. ”

“ The serfs are bound to supply their lord with a certain quantity of wood, poultry, and service, the latter duty being generally compounded for by one of the family becoming a permanent servant or workman in the household of their prince. ”

“ Constantly striving to promote the prosperity of the household, she should oversee all that goes on in the house, that every department is thoroughly attended to, and that the servants are comfortable, at the same time that their various duties are properly performed.
Cleanliness, punctuality, and method are essentials in the character of a good housekeeper. Without these qualities, no household can be well managed. ”

“ Long years of practice made them familiar with the shortest, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every household office, so that really, for the greater part of the time in the house, there seemed, to a looker-on, to be nothing to do. ”

“ The small household must choose servants according to convenience and requirements. Where there are three or four grown-up daughters and the home is a small one, one maid and one butler are sufficient. ”

“ If you never give in to any demands for more wages, and make them fully understand that you mean to keep three servants in the house and no more, you will not have any trouble. It will be an easy place; they will be very glad to stay. These three that I have told you of, are all good servants. ”

“ The general servant's duties depend entirely upon the size of the household of which she is a member and upon the number of other domestics employed. Speaking generally her duties comprise those that are already treated of in the articles on the housemaid and the parlour maid. Often indeed she is expected to do the cooking as well. The routine of a general servant's duties depends upon the kind of situation she occupies; but a systematic servant should so contrive to divide her work, that every day in the week may have its proper share. ”

“ Always a different one, and always some one quite ordinary and modern looking. The strictest orders are given that none of the servants' friends are to be allowed in this part of the house, and the housekeeper has always been with us and is thoroughly trustworthy. ”

“ The English house-keeper is given full power by her mistress to hire and discharge servants, to arrange their meals, their hours, and their duties, so as to make the domestic wheels run smoothly, and to achieve that perfection of service which all who have stayed in an English house can appreciate. ”

“ Servants—those important personages, who in modern days keep the houses and permit their masters and mistresses, on the payment of a round sum per week, to live in the house with them—those ubiquitous personages, who seem to have the faculty of being precisely where they are not wanted, when any family trouble is to be ventilated,—servants were in the house at the time, and there was no guaranty whatever that they had not been sufficiently near to hear every awkward word that had been spoken. ”

“ You would not expect a housekeeper to keep everything tidy and clean in a house, and not give her what she needed to make her strong and able to work; and so the master of the house gives the blood plenty to eat; and it makes no complaint as long as it can do its work well. It is a very busy person, we might say, and, as there is no end of things to do in the house in which you live, the blood works night and day. ”