MAIDS AND BOYS.
[To TRY EDITOR OF TIM " SPECTATOR."' SIR,—I feel so grateful to the excellent women servants I have and have had, that I cannot help saying a word in favour of a class against which such sweeping condemnation is fre- quently expressed. I have not had a very varied experience, as one of my servants has lived with me thirty-two years, another on and off for the last fifteen years in different capacities ever since she was grown up, another four-and-a-
half, and another three years. The two girls in the house and kitchen one does not expect to stay after they have qualified themselves for promotion—however, my present two, whc have lived with me for more than two years, do not seem inclined to move. I am by no means disposed to exchange. any of them for boys. Indeed, the " boy " is by far the most troublesome member of the establishment. If you send him to fetch something in a hurry or take a letter to the post, which ought to take him ten minutes, he is gone for hours and you hear of him careering on his bicycle (which he keeps surreptitiously in the public-house) miles away from home or scampering about with seven others worse than himself in the purlieus—anywhere out of sight—or playing hockey in the meadows where he is supposed to be picking up wood. At the same time it must be owned that he is a considerable source of amusement,—he fills the place of jester in a modern household.
The most amusing little fellow we ever had was as beautiful as a cherub, with the most innocent face and large, pathetic, dark eyes. He was mischievous enough in London, where he pelted our next-door neighbours, as they sat at breakfast, with peas through their dining-room windows, and pinned a ticket on to their maid-servant, when she was going out, with "All this is.;" but when he reached the country his talents blossomed out luxuriantly. One day he put the kittens into the pantry sink and shut the lid over them; their howls happily brought the cook to the rescue before it was too late; he then put them into our man-servant's bed, who was surprised to find something warm and scratching within ; he peppered the poor cat, put salt into the maid's teapot, and sugar into our macaroni cheese, overturned the butcher's trays whenever he met with them, and was the terror of the tradespeople, and when our servant tried to catch him to chastise him he was found singing at the top of his voice at the head of the Salvation Army. On Sunday, when the maids were sitting at leisure under a tree on the Common, they felt a shower of twigs and stones, and looking up spied the bright buttons of this imp perched on the topmost branch in fiendish delight over their discomfiture.
One evening, as we sat at dinner, we beard a squeaking noise, and the boy burst in crying, The eat has got at the canary." We all left our dinners and rushed to the rescue. No cat was to be seen, and, the canary was quietly munching its seed. The noise was produced by the moving of a sofa, and William, with his usual sharpness, had instantly perceived that it might be turned to account in producing an amusing sensation. He would tear flies to pieces, stick pins through them, and otherwise exercise his love of power, and yet when some of the family and the servants were ill in consequence of a bad drain, this little rogue turned into an angel, and a very useful angel, for he cooked the dinner, made the beds, and did everything well that was not his regular work. We soon afterwards left the house, which was taken only for the summer. On the way to the station the maids saw that their fly was attracting public interest and derision. The imp was dancing a hornpipe on the top, and waving a handkerchief tied to an umbrella by way of a flag. They lost him when they reached the station, but at last spied him on the top of a lamp-post. One such monkey in one's house is sufficiently distracting. What would it be if one had a houseful of monkeys? The idea is too appalling to be followed out.—]
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