SIR AND MADAM.
AWELL-TO-DO Englishwoman of the conventional type emigrated lately to Canada. Desiring to set up a small household on more or less English lines, she inquired for a servant. A capable, energetic young girl appeared who answered her questions with ready intelli- gence and seemed to be very well versed in all the elements of domestic economy. The younger and older woman made an excellent impression upon one another, and the mistress ended by engaging the maid, adding, as a sort of afterthought, when financial and other details had been settled, " I should like you to call me ma'am.' " " Oh, I shouldn't like to do that," said the girl shyly, evidently rather aghast at the suggestion ; " you see, it's what I always call mother; but I'll call you `auntie,' and pleased." Could the changeableness of manners and the changeless- ness of human nature be better illustrated ? The new genera- tion in a new country does not even know what the old forms mean ; yet through the unconscious comicality of the girl's reply there glimmers the eternal root of deference which the girl was as naturally willing to give as the woman was naturally desirous to get. The little Canadian was accustomed to think of and to address her mother by a familiar pet name, but her instinctive filial deference forbade her to use it to anyone else ; at the same time she was content to address her employer by any title that her employer might fancy, abandoning, because of her subor- dinate position, the ordinary " Mrs. So-and-so " which was the privilege of the lady's equals. This question of due respect crops up again and again every time that the old order changes. During the change all the fools in the world declare that deference is dead. They might just as well say that human nature was suffering from local mortification. The moralists declare at intervals that deference is due to merit alone ; but the theory, as Dr. Johnson pointed out, is wholly academic, since degrees of merit are impossible to assess, and no meritorious person could exact it on those grounds. " Subordination," he thundered, " tends very greatly to human happiness " ; and he con- sidered that the convention of his day which gave deference to the accident of birth or the obtaining of power, whether by office or money, worked on the whole very well, human nature being what it is. If we lived in the backwoods, he argued, we might make merit the only claim to distinction, but " in civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much dependent upon the good opinion of mankind." Six pounds a year would, he calculated, feed, clothe, and house a single man. (Alack ! the change since then and now !) " This sum will fill your belly, shelter you from the weather, and even get you a strong, lasting coat supposing it to be made of a good bull's hide. Now, Sir, all beyond this is artificial and is desired to obtain a greater degree of respect from our fellow-creatures." The people who said they did not want it he frankly set down as hypocrites, asking how many of those who moralized about the trials of worldly greatness would refuse it.
Sixty years earlier Steele, discussing the same subject, came to very much the same conclusion, but, oddly enough, his point of view is much more modern. " Men of figure " are too prone to ask for deference, he says, but many of them are become " mere lodgers in the house of their ancestors," and do not really get it. " The greatest of all distinctions in civil life is that of debtor and creditor. He who can say, ' Pray, master, or pray, my lord, give me my own,' says in effect : ' It is a fantas- tical distinction you take upon you to pretend to pass upon the world for my master or my lord, while I wait at your door and you are ashamed to see me until you have paid my bill." The overseers of the poor, he goes on to say, " have no great reputation for the discharge of their trust, but are much less scandalous than the overseers of the rich "—a sentence which might have fallen from the pen of Chesterton or Bernard Shaw himself. Nothing, he thinks, can create respect from mankind but laying obli- gations upon them. There is " a mughouse near Long Acre " where he would like these impecunious " men of figure " to hear the conversation. There small tradesmen talk together. " One complains that such a lady's finery is the reason why his own wife and daughter appear so long in the same gown. Another that all the furniture of her writing apartment are no more hers than the scenery of a play are the proper goods of the actress. Nay, at the lower end of the same table you may hear a butcher and poulterer say that at their proper charge all the family has been maintained since last they came to town." Pres- ently the men at the " mughouse get the deference and the men of figure " lose it, crying out sadly against the times ; but the thought of deference and subordination continues to fascinate the human heart. Unless some natural desire of the mind were fulfilled in subordination, no regiment could exist for a week. All fine minds have a tendency to hero-worship as well as a tendency to rule, and all inferior minds have a desire to ape and imitate as well as to be conspicuous. Out of these contradictory tendencies spring a large proportion of the smaller satisfac- tions of life.
In our serious moments we all want to look on ahead and see what will be the ideals and accomplishments of the world when our grandchildren come to our age. But the more anxious we are to know, the more we should feel afraid to look if we got the opportunity. But most men and all women have frivolous moments in which what they really want to know about the future is not its morals but its manners : to see, in other words, how this question of give-and-take in the matter of respect settles itself— how parents and children will behave to one another a few generations hence ; what will be the outward relations of employer and employed, and what social part money will play in the new society ; how the very amusing foible of snobbishness, which seems to be as intrinsic a part of human nature (though so infinitely smaller a one) as respect itself, will express itself, and what new cure the prigs will suggest for its elimination. One thing remains pretty certain. Deference will be given to power, and on how it is given depends the fascinating and ever-changing comedy of the social world.
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