ages apparently mark every stage of advance from a few weeks to as many years. My liking for children amounts to reverent devotion, and it gave me a shock, from which I have not recovered, to find that, unshaven and uncouth in workmen's clothes, I had become for them a bogey with whom their nurses frighten them into obedience, warning them in excited tones with "Here comes the man to take you away!"

It was at this work, too, that I once incurred the avowed displeasure of a guest. She was a beautiful Philistine, with a keenly penetrating twang and turns of speech that bespoke the regions of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. But she was remarkably handsome, tall and graceful, and of high-bred bearing and of a thoroughly aristocratic type. It must be confessed that whenever she was visible from my regions the section of the grounds which commanded a view of her, and was yet fairly beyond the sound of her voice, received assiduous attention from me; for she was highly remunerative to look at. I was sweeping a section of the walk immediately in front of the hotel. Unlike the work at West Point, a porter's duties do not preclude mental effort. Absorbed in thought and quite unconscious of my surroundings, I was suddenly recalled to them and to my station in life by nasal accents raised in strong reproof. I looked up in bewilderment, and saw confronting me the beautiful Philistine, holding a little child by each hand. Very straight she stood and brighteyed, with her head thrown back, and an exquisite flush over her face, and her beautiful lips curled in anger, as she scolded me roundly for raising so much dust. I was unfamiliar with the etiquette of the situation, so I held my peace, and respectfully touched my cap, inwardly calling her the beauty that she was as she stood there, and ardently hoping that she would scold me

more.

From the lawns I go to the kitchen, and offer my services to the chef. Usually he has ready for me a basket of potatoes to peel. In a little shed by the kitchen door I sit and peel endlessly. The servants are flocking in and out through the open door in the fetid air. The heat is of the suffocating kind, in which the heavy air lies dead. It is nearing the dinner hour, and every one must work with almost a

frenzy of effort. The high tension communicates itself to us all, and we feel the nervous strain upon our tempers. The hundred and one petty annoyances which cause the friction of household service prove too much, and the tension bursts into a furious quarrel between the Irish pastry-cook and the negro head-waiter. No one has time to heed them, but his storming oaths and her plaintive, whining key, maintained with provoking tenacity, whatever relief they bring to them, are far from soothing to the rest of us.

The maids are gathered from all parts of the hotel. Most of them have been on duty since six o'clock, and after the morning's work there now awaits them the rush of serving dinner. Want of sufficient sleep and utter physical weariness have drawn deep lines in their faces. Presently one of them, a slender young girl, sinks exhausted into a seat, and we hear her notion of the summum bonum: "Oh, I wish I was rich, and could swing all day in a hammock!" I follow the direction of her eyes. Across a wide stretch of lawn and in the shade of some clustered maples I see the gleam of a white dress rocking gently in a hammock, and I catch the flutter of a fan and the light on an open page.

Sometimes I am in the region of the kitchen during the dinner hour itself. As an experience, I fancy that it is not unlike that of being behind the scenes in the course of the play. The kitchen and pantry are ill-ventilated, and are hot to suffocation.

About a counter-like partition which separates the two rooms crowd the eager waitresses, rehearsing in shrill tones their orders to the chef and his assistant. There is a babel of voices striving to be heard, and a ceaseless clatter of dishes, and a hurrying to and fro. The chef is not a bad fellow, but his temper is rarely proof against the harassing annoyances incident upon serving a dinner, and he loses it in a torrent of oaths. The volume of noise increases until the height of dinner is reached and passed, and then it subsides, quite like a thunder-storm.

The afternoon's work keeps me, for the most part, in my own regions. The lamps must first be cleaned and filled, and then the billiard-tables brushed for the evening play, and there may remain unfinished work on the grounds, which claims me

When I am out of the office, I must be careful that the doors and the windows are open, and my ears attentive to the bell; for I am porter and bell-boy in one.

A bell-boy is sometimes at a disadvantage. He is not supposed to explain, and circumstances may wrong him.

The bell rings. I run to the indicator, and then climb to the door that bears the corresponding number. A lady asks for a pitcher of ice-water. Unluckily the icechest is locked, and the key, I learn, is in the keeping of the head-waiter. After hasty search, I find that official seated on a rock in the shade behind the barn, conversing with some of the hands. He tells me that there is no ice in the chest, and advises my going to the ice-house. I do so, with all possible speed, and am fortunate enough to find a piece of loose ice not far below the surface of saw-dust. Back to the kitchen I run with it, wash it, and chop it into fragments. But all this has taken time; it is very hot and the lady, no doubt, is very thirsty. As I hand her the pitcher of water, her caustic acknowledgment expresses anything but gratitude.

The verandas are no sooner swept for the afternoon than the stage appears from the station. I must be in attendance to relieve the newly arrived guests of their lighter luggage and, with the help of one of the stable-boys, to carry their trunks to their rooms.

It was in such services as these that I met with an insuperable difficulty. Before I launched upon the enterprise of earning my living by manual labor, I settled it with myself that I should shrink from no honest work, however menial, that might fall within the range of my experiment. I confess that, in my present avocation, when it came to the necessity of cleaning the cuspidors used by a tobacco-eating gentry, the task was accomplished only after hard setting of teeth, and much involuntary contraction of muscles. But I hasten to let fall a veil already too widely drawn from the hidden rites of a porter's service. The difficulty in point was of another kind, and had to do with tips. I was not unprepared for the emergency, for the proprietor had hinted, in our first conversa

and with a tone of apology for the eight dollars a month, that that amount was sure to be supplemented by gratuities. It might have been different under other circumstances; but when I had seen the guests and noted the unmistakable marks of residence in cheap flats and low-rent suburban cottages, and realized the careful husbanding of funds, and the close calculation which made a summer outing possible to them, their fees were some degrees beyond the possible to me.

In the case of the luggage, it was easy to bow acknowledgment and to decline in favor of Sam, the stable-boy, who, beaming with delight, stood ready to receive gifts to any amount, and who loved me warmly. But when I was alone with some guest in the act of a personal service, the situation created by a proffered fee proved embarrassing to us both, and was not to be relieved by bows and expressions of sincere appreciation.

The evening's duties are usually the lighting of the lamps at night-fall, and assorting the mail that comes in after supper, and attending the billiard and pool tables, and answering the bell-calls. Saturday afternoons and evenings are varied with industrious preparations for extra guests. This makes added demands upon us all, and the servants dread Sunday as bringing always the severest strain of the week. My own share of extra work is confined to Saturday afternoon and evening, when I put up cots, and carry bed-linen and blankets about, under the orders of the housekeeper, usually until midnight. And when I go to sleep at last it is on the hay in the barn, for my room is swept and garnished on Saturday and given up to a guest. It is no hardship to sleep on the hay, but, through knowledge gained from the scale of prices posted in the office, I cannot but understand what an admirable business arrangement it is for the proprietor to so utilize my room over Sunday. The added revenue which is thus yielded during my stay amounts to fifteen dollars, and as the total sum of my wages for the three weeks is five dollars and sixty-seven cents, the net returns to the proprietor in service and profit speak well for his management.

But there is other evidence of good management, and in a quarter that ap

peals to me more. His treatment of the "help" is so uniformly fair. I do not like him; but, so far as I know, I am alone in my dislike among all the servants of the house; and I cannot fail to see that a feeling of personal loyalty is behind much of the patient, enduring service to which I have been witness. Only once was there an approach to a collision between us, and certainly I emerged from that in rather a ridiculous light.

It was but two or three evenings ago. Usually I have been able to eat at our table enough at least to deaden appetite, but on that evening I could eat nothing. As I passed through the pastry kitchen on my way back to the office, I saw a few pieces of corn-bread which were apparently to be thrown away. I asked the cook for some, and she readily told me to help myself. On a flagging near the kitchen door, I sat down to eat the bread, and the proprietor must have seen me there in the dim light. I had not finished when the negro head-waiter came upon me in much excitement. I belong to a lower order of service than he, but he treats me civilly, and there was nothing more than nervousness in his manner now.

"You mustn't get cheese from the pantry without leave," he was saying in high agitation.

I thought that he had gone mad, but he presently made clear that the proprietor had come to him with the complaint that I was eating cheese, which is kept in the pantry, and is not intended for the lower servants. The supper-table had upset me, and the cornbread which caused the present trouble had been cold comfort. I was furiously angry now, hot and aglow with a passion of rage which at that moment was a splendid sensation. With great civility I thanked the head-waiter, and explained the mistake, and showed him a fragment of bread still in my hand, and then asked where I should find the proprietor. He had gone to the office, and I followed him there, scarcely conscious of touching the ground. It was close upon the mail hour, and the office was crowded with guests. Near the stove stood the proprietor, and he saw me as I approached him. I was looking him full in the eyes when I told him, without introductory remarks, that if he had any

further criticisms to offer upon my conduct he was at liberty to bring them directly to me. If I had had any sense of humor left I should have laughed then at his appearance, and have forestalled the ridiculous scene, in which, with a look of distressed embarrassment, he edged toward the door, and I followed, with my eyes on his, as I treated him to the most cynically patronizing sentences which I could frame, while the guests looked on in silence.

Once in the quiet of the veranda, he explained to me that, since he holds the head-waiter responsible in such matters, he had naturally complained to him, and added that he was sorry if any mistake had been made. I pointed out the mistake, and felt the fool that I was, and spent the evening in a long walk over the hills, returning only in time to lock up and put out the lights.

As a basis of comparison I have now the two short terms of service at West Point and here. I received employment at both places as almost any laborer might have done, and I found in them both the means of livelihood. But as a servant, I have found more than that. The man who had been engaged as porter appeared about a week after my arrival. He proved to be Martha's brother, and a newly landed immigrant. There was no mistaking the last fact. His peaked countenance, with surviving traces of ruddy color; his queer pot-hat, that rested on his ears; his bright woollen tippet, defying the heat; his baggy suit, which had doubtless served for day and night through all the voyage; his heavy boots— all proclaimed him the raw material of a new citizen. Nor could there be a doubt of his kinship with Martha. She stood with me awaiting the stage, directing eager glances down the carriage-drive and excitedly asking questions about its coming. She was the first to see it, and to recognize her brother on the seat with Sam, and she fluttered about in the unconcealed delight of affection, perfectly unconscious of every one, until her arms were about her brother's neck, and she was leading him away to the kitchen.

Nothing was said to me about leaving ; Martha's brother became her assistant as a dish-washer, and learned to lend a generally useful hand in the kitchen.

And so I had fairly won my place, and

had open before me a way of promotion. Experience alone could disclose the value of the opening; but the " House"

is a winter as well as a summer resort, and a porter's services are therefore in demand through the year. If efficient, intelligent labor could not eventually win higher and more responsible position in such an enterprise, and possibly gain, at last, an interest in the business, the case is surely exceptional.

It is the change in external conditions and its bearing upon me as a human worker which have most impressed me, in contrast with my first experience.

I worked for nine hours and a quarter at West Point; and had, at the end of the day's labor, if the weather had been good, eighty-five cents above actual living expenses. Here I have usually worked from five o'clock in the morning until eleven at night, at all manner of menial drudgery, and have gone to bed in the comfortable assurance that, in addition to food and shelter, I have earned twenty-six cents and a fraction. And yet, as a matter of choice, purely with reference to the conditions under which the work is done, I should infinitely prefer a week of my present duties to a single day at such labor as that at West Point.

The work here is specific, and it is mine, to be done as I best can. Responsibility and initiative and personal pride enter here, and render the eighteen hours of this work incomparably shorter than the nine hours of my last. It is true that it partakes of the character of much household service, in that it is ever doing and is never done; but there is a feeling of accomplishment in the fact of getting my quarters clean and the grounds in order, and in keeping them so, although it be at the cost of labor always repeated and never ended.

Perhaps it is because I am still haunted by the thought of the cruel bondage of unskilled labor, under which men exhaust their powers of body and mind and soul at work that, in the very conditions of its doing, seems to harden them into slaves, instead of strengthening them into men, that I fail to feel keenly the want of time that I can call my own. I have an independence of vastly better sort in having work which I can call my own, and which I can do with some human pleasure and

interest and profit in its performance, however hard it may be.

Slender as is my acquaintance with either, I yet see, with perfect certainty, that the standard of character is higher in this company of servants than among the gang of unskilled laborers. Other causes may have a share in this result, but the efficient cause is clear in the better moral atmosphere in which the work is done. I do not know how conscious is the feeling of unity of interest with their employer, or of copartnery with one another in labor, or of personal responsibility; but all these motives must play a part in effecting the successful accomplishment of the housework, with its intricacies and interdependences which render constant personal oversight impossible. Of course the proprietor has much trouble with the "help," and there are frequent changes among them; but the body of the company remains the same, and some of the servants have been here for several seasons.

Certainly one is obliged to look elsewhere than to wages for a cause of better work as showing a finer moral fibre, if I may judge from my twenty-six cents a day. I dare say that mine is the minimum wage. The chef told me that he gets sixty dollars a month, and I fancy that his is the maximum sum. It is purely a guess, but I venture it, that the average among us would not exceed five dollars a week. Five dollars a week above the necessaries of life will buy much among the commonest proletariat. Under certain conditions that, or even a less sum, might buy industrious and almost continuous effort for fourteen or eighteen hours a day, but not, I fancy, in the present economic condition of household servants in this country. There must be other causes to account for that.

The want of time which is at one's own command is the commonest objection urged against domestic service as accounting for the ready choice of harder work with far less of creature comfort, but with definite limits and entire disposing of the rest of one's day. Stronger than this, I fancy, as an objection, is a social disability which attaches to service, and under the sway of which a house-maid has not the prospect of so good a marriage, socially considered, as a factory girl, who earns

a scanty living, but is subject to no one's commands outside of the factory gates.

The strength of social conventions is a force to be reckoned with among the working classes. It may seem that below the standing of folk gentle by birth and breeding there are no social standards or social barriers of serious strength. I begin to suspect that distinctions are as clearly made on one side of that line as the other. Very certain I am that the upper servants here and the nurses and house-maids are removed from us of the clothes-washing and dish-washing and floor-scrubbing fraternity by a very considerable social gulf.

66

A course of eighteen hours of continuous daily duty soon gives one a surprising relish for the pleasure of doing as you please. I know now something of the delight of a Sunday off." I got my first leave of absence one afternoon when I was allowed to go to the village of Central Valley to have my boots mended. Not since I was a small boy at boarding-school have I felt the same vivid pleasure in going freely forth, knowing that, for the time, I was my own master; and when I returned to the hotel, it was very much with the school-boy's feeling of passing again under the yoke.

Ан not for thee,

Wave upon wave,

And harm thee not.

A few short years,

Side by thy side,