Staff of life

“ Every American ought to cultivate, as his pride and birthright, the habit of self-helpfulness. Our command of 299 the labors of good employees in any department is liable to such interruptions, that he who has blacked his own boots, and can do it again, is, on the whole, likely to secure the most comfort in life. ”

“ In either service a good and honourable career is open to you—for you have everything found for you, food, housing, clothing, and hospital, with good pay and the certainty of promotion and pension for the rest of your life if you make up your mind to serve loyally, steadily, and well. ”

“ Not for itself but for every being that drinks in life and beauty from its beams, does the light return each morning on the earth. Not to rejoice in their own array do the lily and the rose deck themselves in splendour. Not to be an end unto themselves do the fruits of the valley spring. Not for its own sake does the patient ox labour in the furrow. Service and subordination are the life of the universe ”

“ Their offices, though distinct, are co-ordinate, and duty often calls them to the same house of mourning and to the bedside of the same expiring patient. No other professions are brought into such close proximity. The duties of no others are fraught with such deep responsibility, or are required on such momentous occasions. ”

“ The mysterious 'understanding' of servants, and their wide knowledge of each other's experiences, may be explained upon a perfectly simple and rational theory, and I think we may venture to reject the 'society' hypothesis altogether.
Servant life is as much a world in itself as political, religious, or art life. ”

“ Our claim to be capable servants of our Master and reincarnations of his life is judged in our little world by the good work we do; if as surgeons or nurses, by our skill; if as storekeepers and labor employers, by the clean deals we give. ”

“ Whatever may have been the amount of service due to the master at the time of his departure,—whether the whole life and energy of a slave, or a limited quantity of work from a servant,—that service was his property, and he desired to turn it to the best account. ”

“ But if you call this a staff, you will enter hell like an arrow. With this staff in my hand I can measure the depths and shallows of the world. The staff supports the heavens and makes firm the earth. Everywhere it goes the true teaching will be spread. ”

“ The propriety of keeping so many idle serving men is sharply called in question in a tract entitled Cyuile and Vncyuile Life, 1579, and an effort is made to prove the dignity of a serving man's position, while its decline is confessed in A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen, 1598. ”

“ The old servant has seen many changes and in many cases prefers the good old ways; there may be some better arrangements made, we cannot doubt that, but we are surprised at good old practices that our late beloved employers had ignored by their own children [Pg 693] after they have so far grown up. Servants need the good example from their superiors, and when they hear the world speak well of them they do look for the good ways in the home life. ”

“ Under present conditions we, staff and special service officers, have to turn our hand to every kind of job as occasion demands, and one man has to do the ordinary work of half a dozen different offices. ”

“ This afternoon I had pledged myself to a new service—a service of self-renunciation and patient labour, undertaken—yes, I dare to say it—for the welfare of the large sisterhood of waiting and working women. A servant? ”

“ In the question betwixt a master and a servant, we must distinguish betwixt benefits, duties, and actions ministerial. By benefits, we understand those good offices that we receive from strangers, which are voluntary, and may be forborne without blame. ”

“ I am the nurse; I help the doctor.
Teacher. Do you build houses or furnish fuel?
Doctor. No, we keep people well, or aid them when they are ill; that is our part.
All recite:
One works for all and all for one,
And so the work of the world gets done. ”

“ The first topic to which I shall call your attention is your daily employment, and by that I mean the method by which you earn your livelihood. Or, supposing that, having some independent means of support, you are not compelled to labour for your daily bread, then I shall point out that special form of work, the doing of which Providence has plainly made to be your duty. ”

“ Most of you here present will be in a few years in charge of others, filling posts of responsibility. All are on the threshold of active life. Then our characters will be put to the test, whether in some position of charge or of subordination, or both. Shall we be found wanting? ”

“ A big staff includes cranks, and enthusiasts, students and philosophers, men of every race and religion whose illuminated intelligence reflects every phase of eccentricity, every degree of sanity, as well as every perfection of common sense—men of intelligence, earnestness, sensitiveness, filled with ambition and alive with interest and seeking above all to succeed in the business. ”

“ Officers are conventionally amenable to society; society, with its officers and its rules of conduct, amenable to the purpose of society; the design of individual life, to the individuals that compose it; individuals, with their rules of conduct, amenable each to his own conscience; and all to the law of the universe, to the Eternal Right, which represents the conscience of God. ”

“ In every contact with authority, with their employer, with the police, with the School Board officer, in the hospital, or in the workhouse, they have equally the occasion to appreciate the light-hearted civility of the man in office ”

“ The servants are models of their kind. With their sandaled feet they glide about without noise and do their work without murmur. You leave your soiled linen in their charge and find it on your bed as white as snow. They receive your gratuity with a thousand thanks and profound obeisance, stumble over their own feet to do you some unnecessary service, and as soon as off duty they offer to guide you about the city. ”

“ The men are working for the military here in improving the post, and they all have an interest in them for their work, and I think a little help from your department, as above mentioned, would be better for them than to turn them loose again to wander in idleness or learn evil, or go back to bad habits again. ”

“ Every great work is the result of vast preparatory training. Facility comes by labour. Nothing seems easy, not even walking, that was not difficult at first. The orator whose eye flashes instantaneous fire, and whose lips pour out a flood of noble thoughts, startling by their unexpectedness, and elevating by their wisdom and truth, has learned his secret by patient repetition, and after many bitter disappointments. ”

“ In this way a regular staff could be set to work, under competent direction, and could be kept steadily at work until its performances became so generally known and so useful as to enable it to stand alone and be self-supporting. ”

“ Something too should be done with the existing professions to make them worthy of honourable ambition. One of them, the Church, is a noble body without a soul; the soul, our nostrils tell us, died some time ago, while the medical profession has got a noble spirit with a wretched half-organized body. ”

“ Again, if one turns to practice, it is still the old story—wait; and only after years of working like a galley-slave and intriguing like a courtier is there any chance of getting a decent livelihood. I am not at all sure if...it would be the most prudent thing to stick by the Service: there at any rate is certainty in health and in sickness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is good for you to work, and the exciting scenes you have passed through during the last four years have been a good preparation for making you an active and efficient officer. But what I want to say is this: if your health fails, or if, sooner or later, you marry and would like to settle down at home, or if from any other cause you want to leave the service, remember there is no occasion for you to work for your living. ”

“ In this office, which was a very responsible one for a single man, they were assisted by the whole body of citizens, who were not only permitted, but even bound by their duty, to take part in the exercises of the boys, instructing, encouraging, or even punishing them. ”

“ Not with that obedience that will serve man only. Servants must have their eye on the Lord, in the work they do for their masters. 3. That their work in this service is the will and ordinance of God. From which I conclude, that thy work in thy place and station, as thou art a servant, is as really God's ordinance, and as acceptable to him, in its kind, as is preaching, or any other work, for God; and that thou art as sure to receive a reward for thy labour, as he that hangs or is burnt for the gospel. ”

“ The chief of the Scientific Staff sets an example which is more potent than any other factor in maintaining that bond of good fellowship which is the marked and beneficent characteristic of our community. ”

“ I once heard my dear mother talking to a person who troubled himself very much about the management of God’s world. She said, ‘I have often compared our present condition to that of servants who might be called into a great house to assist in performing some important work; but instead of the same servants being employed throughout, each was expected to work only one hour, and then to give place to others. ”

“ Let us hope he is some physician who has been attending to his patients; or a minister of the gospel who has spent the night by the bedside of some sinking penitent; or a supervisor, who—while his constituents have been snugly dreaming away their troubles—has been legislating, and growing hoarse declaiming for the public good. Doctor or supervisor, as the case may be, it is evident he is sleepy, and cares not who knows it. Otherwise he would pick up his hat, which has fallen off, before it has twice been stepped on by passengers staggering through the car while it is in motion. ”

“ Some thoroughly good servant, who has made sacrifices to forward his employer’s interest, is at last, through no offence of his own, found to be in his employer’s way, and at once all old services are forgotten, all old ties broken, and the authority of the employer, legal but inhuman, is exercised. ”

“ The answer necessarily must be, that improvements in our department of work must come, as they do elsewhere, by the investigation, the study, the thought and the effort of those who are in actual control, of those who are in a position to see, to observe and to know. ”

“ PREFACE. As no relations in society are so numerous and universal as those of Masters and Servants—as those of Household Duties and the performers of them—so it is proportionally important that they should be well defined and understood. It is a species of knowledge as important to the head of a family as necessary to the servant ”

“ Servants are under obligation to obey their masters: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ.” Eph. 6:5. The servant's service to his master should not be wholly for the hire. He should not fear to do him ill service because of not receiving his wages, but his service should be in singleness of heart—an honest, upright purpose—as unto Christ. ”

“ Many persons, particularly those new to the country, do everything through their head servant, or “bearer”; but I make him stick to his own work, which is the control of the house and the house servants. ”

“ On the other hand, your so-called professional man—your physician, for instance—must be more than decently lodged; be arrayed, at no matter what hour of the day,—such is the Old World convention,—in a faultless frock-coat and silk hat; be restrained, not to say dignified, in demeanour; assume to be busy when he is weary unto death with inaction,—and all this though hunger be consuming his very vitals. ”

“ And yet, my boy, there are many in the world, with larger responsibilities than yours are at present; think, for instance, of a great employer of labour who has to decide great things, affecting, perhaps, the welfare of both his employés and his business. ”

“ Out of those who die, a few of the most meritorious are selected to perform certain duties in the management of mankind. I having lived virtuously was appointed, at my death, to one of these offices; and my present employment is to prevent men from being too happy. ”

“ Note, He that hath appointed our man-servant and maid-servant to rest would have his servants to rest too. Those in the most public stations, and that are most publicly useful, must sometimes go aside privately, both for the repose of their bodies, to recruit them, and for the furnishing of their minds by meditation for further public work. ”

“ It is evident that our Masters have already, many millennia ago, formed a special band of servers and helpers from those who have offered themselves for such work, and They use this body of men as a kind of regiment of pioneers to be sent wherever special work of that kind is needed. ”

“ My principal dependence for living is on the labor of my own hands. I am confident, sir, you can serve me, as you are conversant with every department of the Government and may know what places can be had and whether I am capable of being usefully employed. ”

“ We are aware that it must impose upon us a vast amount of additional labour; but we have felt it our bounden duty, regardless of our own convenience, to take every step to promote your welfare, and to prepare you for the practical duties of your profession. We trust you will meet us in a proper spirit, and reward us by your industry and attention. ”