ARTICLES BY “SNYDER.”

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 81, 17 December 1887, Page 3

ARTICLES BY “SNYDER.”

THS ZND OF A JOURNALIST’S CA REER

HIS LAST RESOURCE.

(Con tinned.)

" 0, yes, its all very fine " said a very P*PJ*ry girl to me, " all very fine, * •Aying why didn't I stop where you •ent me to. I tell you if you only knew what some girls have to put up with, with some misseses you wouldn’t •o much wonder at girls going wrong or marrying the first man that asks her. U ith me it was first up in the morning and last in on a shake-down bed at night. It Was Jane get up, Jane, is master’* boot* cleaned, and is the breakfast ready ? Jane, have you cleaned out the front room and polished master’s door plate P Jane, its washing day r and when just as one’s got the clothes sorted and the water on the boilj its Jane send down to the butcher and get some chops for master’s dinner ; and, Jane oomeand hold the baby while Igo Up stairs; and then, Jane when do you expect to get the wash out of hand when you haven’t finished the coloured things P and, Jane totnorrow ia Saturday when there’s all the scrubbing to do, so you had better clean the plate mid silver after tea’s cleared; and its Jane you can’t go to church this evening because I’m going myself, just as if a servant hadn’t got a soul to be saved like her misses. It was Jane heM and Jane there and Jane everywhere, and Jane this and Jane that from morning till night with A lot of squalling children under your feet and dragging at your skirts all through the day, and then there's the grand misses in the parlor telling another grand misses what a plague servants ire, and how she wishes she could do without them, and what a sight of wages she pays, and how indulgent and considerate she is to her Servants, and the other grand misses •he says just the same things, while •he is sipping a glass of sherry wine, and eating carroway and sweet cake. Wrongl I should think girls might

well go wrong. jßw/ we get good waget ! Is that what you say ? Well, I suppose £4O a year, or may be £45, is what one Would call good wages for a fair thing, but its very poor pay for a year of drudgery and no thanks for whatever one does, and no room for one to sleep by herself in or say her prayers in private asking for grace of patience I suppose it may be allowed there was some truth in the girl’s complaints, but it would never do for me to say so because I should have all the mistresses Of the place with a down on me, and refusing to come to my office for a servant girl when their last had left. Of course girls ore cheeky, and think nothing of going to a. place one day and leaving the next, /because first impressionshaven'tpleased them. They know they have only to come to me, or go to some other office, to get another. Yesterday I brought a “ missus ” face to face with a young woman who wanted a cook's place. A- ?r the first questions had been asked the girl stood up and said, " Begging your pardon ma’am, I don’t think your place would suit me I’m

sure." “ But why are you sure;? ” was the question put. “ Well, ma’am, if you usill press me ao hard I will tell you that 1 don’t like your appearance. We shouldn’t hit it” Here was candour in pure Anglo Saxon ; and to £’ve the girl credit for her judgment Laraterism I certainly went with her a* regards the lady's appearance which was not so sweet or pleasant to look upon as an early rose with the dew drops on its blush soon after a lumtner sunrise.

Sift. 28—More phases of human nature. An old man with the complexion of a winter russet, comes to me and says he wants a comfortable billet. He had only been in this country six months. He said he had lived with Lord Roseberry the matter of fourteen year. Lord Boseberry he bad heard had married a Jew girl since he left One of the Botch schild family in the female line of direction. She had sackfuls of money—as much as if the sorereigns placed one on the top of the other flat-ways would make a pile as high as St. Pauls and the Monument, and then leare enough sovereigns to pave Pall Mall and Begent Street with. Lady Roseberry’* family could break the Bank of England and set up one of their own in its place. And I might be sum that they would do it if the Bank gave them any of their nonsense. He didn’t think Lord Boseberry would be very happy if Lady Boseberry was allowed to have too much of her own way; because he knowed that Lord Boseberry couldn’t bear oil, not even on his hair when it was scented ever so nice, and if the lady would be putting salad oil—even of the very finest quality—into everything Lord

Boseberry would be riled, and if Lady Boseberry got sons by Lord Boseberry, he was quite sure there would be rows in the family if Lady Boseberry should want to bring them up in the Jewish religion—could I get him a good comfortable easy place. He looked upon it that it would be considered a recommendation that he had lived with a Lord. Lords didn’t generally have a lot of nobodies in their service. He was too old to do much hard work himself, but he would like to be in a gentleman’s family and look after the gardener, and see that things were going on right in the kitchen. He knew when fruit was ready for picking, and, being a good judge of vittles, he knew when a dinner was properly served. He understood “ spanels ” well. I asked what were “ spanels.” He said they were fancy dogs kept by ladies who had nothing else to do but feed ’em after they had been washed in the laundry. He knew he should be looked up to by the servants in a gentleman’s family, because they would soon know he had lived with a Lord. He was a sober man and liked his meals regular. Yes, and he liked his

pint of ale at dinner and his pint at supper. He didn’t care about sperrets. They didn’t agree with him. He lik, d to go to bed regular at eight o’clock and be was always up by cockcrow ; but not as cocks crowed in this country, which they began at twelve o’clock at night and went on at it every hour till daylight as regular as a watchman calling the hours, I asked him what

wages he would expect. “ Well, you know,” he said, “I didn't come to a part of the world which was upside down, without expecting to be pretty well paid after leaving a Lord’s service to see a married daughter who was doing dairying on a farm and was going to get married to a man as drove his own team of bullocks and bad a section of land with the title deeds quite safe in a gentleman's keeping who was very rich and lent out lots of money at interest upon security, He should like thirty shillings a week and his meals reglar. ’1 hat would leave him five shillings a week to spend in clothes and twenty-five to put in a saving's bank. I said I was afraid I could scarcely hope to get him the place he wanted and thirty shillings a week, even though he had lived with a lord. He said how much could I get him. I told him I thought that 1 knew a clergyman who would take him into hit house, but who wouldn't give him any pints of ale, but whose cooking was really first rate. I thought the clergyman I knew would take him for nothing, but would draw a few' shillings a week out of the local Charitable Belief Fund for aged and infirm men, which he (the clergyman) would appropriate for finding him (the late lord’s servant) in food and shelter. If the old man didn’t like that I knew of nothing else to suit him, and my advice to him was that he should go back to Lord Boseberry, or to his daughter who was engaged to the gentleman who owned a team of bullock* and who had a section of land, the title deeds of which were in such safe hands.

The old man said he was sorry he had crossed the water now, aad he departed from me saying he should send a letter to Lord Boseberry next mail, telling him not to advise any of his old servants to come out to New Zealand.