Servants in German Families.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 878, 28 December 1888, Page 4

Servants in German Families.

In Germany, says a correspondent of the Washington Post, it makes no difference to a nobleman whether you own a shop or are merely employed in one. In both cases yon work, and that is sufficient. He looks down upon you. The effect of this is that the German shop-keeper and man of middle class does not keep his clerk and servants at half the distance that his American confrere does. An American shop-keeper lives in a fine house and walks about his ‘ emporium of fashion ’ as haughtily as a Czar. If his wife or daughter honour the place at all it is when they want a new dress or a cheque from papa. In France or Germany the same class of shop-keeper lives in the room over his shop, and in all probability has his wife keep his books and his daughter wait at the counter. At night, when the house is put to rights, the housemaid will come into the family sitting-room, and while knitting listen to hei employer read his papers or chat with the family. She is not kept in a back room in the attic nor thrown entirely on her own resources for amusement. Hence the German and French do not ex* perience that difficulty in securing capable domestic help which most American housewives too often encounter. They bring their customs, more or leas, to this country ; and in American cities the first to get good house servants and the last to lose them are not Americans but German and French families. Time was, in New England at any rate, when house-girls were not called servants and were not treated as machines out of which was to be gotten all the work possible. They used to say ‘Help’ in New England, and when the ‘ Help ’ had finished her duties she not seldom rolled down her sleeves and took her seat at the table along with the family. That custom is no longer in vogue, except perhaps, now and then iu the country, or in very small towns, and as a result it is now as hard to get house help in New England as in any other part of the country.