ROUND THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XX, 16 November 1895, Page 610

ROUND THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

[with apologies to the autocrat of the breakfast table.] < “I” PROPOSE this morning, ‘ said the Professor, ‘ to i[ introduce a change in our conversational bill of fare—a change, I may remark, not too often discernible in the actual menu, owing to its sacred conservative policy, influenced occasionally by party feeling—in fact, we only have a change when there is a party.’ ‘Have some more marmalade, now do, sir,’ said our landlady, vaguely impressed with the consciousness of a compliment. ‘ Why employ the term “ Bill of Fare?” ’ queried the Frivolous Youth. *ltis a name suggestive of Wellington restaurants, where there is much bill and little fare. For an establishment so genteel as ours, where meals are consumed at an Atlantic greyhound speed, “ Bill of Lading ” would be more appropriate.’ The Elderly Maiden Aunt made a move, which she often does, presumably to escape a draught, but never, apparently, to take a man. The Professor addressed the Frivolous Youth severely : 1 As a continual dropping on a rainy day is to your immaculate collar, my friend, so is vulgarity to fun ; it takes the starch out, and makes of wit a limp and shapeless and bedraggled object, fit only to be pegged up on a clothes line of scorn, beneath the scorching rays of intellectual criticism, whence it becomes dry humour. I propose,’ he continued (while we assisted in picking up the pieces of the Frivolous Youth), ‘ to retail a few experiences of a lady friend of mine with her domestic servants —those problems of universal interest which cry to us for solution (by reason of their large demand and little supply) in the “ Wanted ” columns of every daily ; whose woes are emblazoned, to our reproach, on the fiery banners of trades’ unions ; whose positive faults and negative virtues are served up to us with a regularity proportionate to our grumblings over the irregularity of our meals—thrust upon us in the inner sanctity of home. Truly the fair domestic makes as many family jars as she breaks.

‘ “ I advertised for an experienced general servant,” said my friend, relating her trials. “ For three weeks I waited in and had no applicants. The morning I went out thirteen girls called. I was desperate, and wrote to the first name and address pushed under the hall-door. That was how I never saw, until I had engaged her, the girl destined to turn my fair locks grey. Her attitude pleased me when she arrived. It was one of respectful attention, inquiry, and determination to master every detail of her work. How much inquiry, how much detail, I was to learn to my cost. That girl was a bundle of questions, an interrogation point walking about. Each separate curl bobbing on her forehead grew to the shape and dimensions of a query in my horrified imagination. She was a whole edition of Magnail—without the answers ; these, the unfortunate who happened to be near her, had to supply. She was more effectual than a brand new set of Inquisition toys, rack and thumbscrew and all. She questioned me on my manners and methods of doing things down to the minutest, most trivial detail, not once, in order to learn, but again and again. I said to her one day. ironically, * Perhaps you would also like to know how I cook a husband, Kate.’ She said, ‘ Yes, mum,’ and prepared to hear the recipe with an unmoved face. My entrance to the kitchen was the signal for a six-barrelled revolver load of queries, while a broom, or a duster, or a flower-vase in my hand made the target for a whole volley of questions. She discovered me once preparing a dose of Mother Seigel, and proceeded upon a medical enquiry so exhaustive that I dreamt wildly of chloroform. Yet to repulse that earnest, inquiring nature was to feel a criminal. I endured for a fortnight what would have settled Mr Pharaoh faster than all the ten plagues put together. Then I told her that my mother-in-law’s sister’s daughter, or my sister-in-law’s daughter’s mother —I forget what in my agitation I concocted, but may Heaven grant extenuating circumstances—was coming to stay with me. and that henceforth I shouldn’t require a servant. Exit affliction No. 1. “‘The second was hardly more successful. She was

recommended to me by a Slum and Drift Society. 1 went down early on her first morning to superintend the making of breakfast. This followed : —Did I put two or three handfuls of oatmeal in the porridge ? Three s Her old missis on’y put two, but then her old missis was that mean, an’ her ’usband a small built man with a appetite no bigger’n a mosquito, which ought to ’ave ’ad dainties to feed ’im up, but not she ! an’ took to drink ’n tried to shoot hisself, ’n was no good auy’ow, all along of that extra ’andful of oatmeal, which he ’ad ought to ’ave got, an’ came to her one night late with his pore bones shewin’ that plain thro’ his clothes, you could’ve rattled them in a bag, an’ says, ‘ Maria,’ says he, ‘get me the keys of the cupboard for the love of ’eaven With that I walks into ’er an* demands them keys in the interests of ’umanity an’ the starvin’ skelliugton what she promised to love an’ cherish, an’ seed ’er go green an’ tremblin’-like all over an’ give’m to ’im out of the curling papers in ’er ’air, which she thought we wasn’t cute enough to find out, au’ give me notice there and then, an’ glad I was to go. Whether she experienced a similar delight on leaving my house I cannot tell, but go she did—packing !

‘ “ The next was a pretty girl who asked innocently if her young man ‘ that went to church reg’lar and had kep’ company with her for three years come Christmas ’ might call for her and ‘ fetch her home ’ on her night out. I said ‘ certainly,’ indulging the while in a little pleasant, fanciful speculation over these two young things sipping their innocent draughts of happiness at my back gate. I had.occasion to enter by it the next evening, and encountered a row of nondescript males keeping guard—of every age, attire, and profession, including quartz-breaking Government contracts’ to judge by the appearance of some of them. The hostile looks with which they regarded each other suggested a free fight. The place looked like a Convict Barracks. I noticed the milkman, on the strength of one day’s acquaintance, amongst the number, and straightway banished my fair domestic to uninterrupted enjoyment of her conquests.

‘ “Then came a girl who occasioned such endless repetition of orders that we believed her deaf, until undeceived by the discovery of all our private gossip circulating through the neighbourhood. A Primitive Methodist young woman followed, who got off to attend prayermeeting on two nights of the week, and Bible class and Sunday-school anniversary tea-fights the remaining five. She left me hurriedly one day to nurse her sick mother —so did the best silver teaspoons.

‘ “And so on. There was the book-loving girl, who burnt the toast in one hand, while she devoured a novel in the other. I sympathised most with this type, but, in view of her domestic reputation,conceived it my duty to introduce her to a Mutual Improvement and Debating Society, where she had the love of literature for ever quenched !”

‘ I could mention many more but tempus jug it. Despite a few seeming contradictions, my experience of the Colonial ‘ ‘ general ’ ’ on the whole has shown hera capable and worthy representative of her class. Her domestic training makes her of necessity a better wife for the average small-wage-earning mechanic than the girl trained in a factory can be, although the latter occupation unquestionably affords her a greater degree of freedom, and above all, that companionship with her fellows, so dear to the ordinary daughter of the people, whose powers of self-resource have never been cultivated. She naturally prefers these advantages to the isolated drudgery of a servant’s life, yet, in the natural order of events, a common destiny awaits both, and that training must surely be best which best enables a woman to fulfil it. If only in view, then, of the probable lifetime to be spent in managing a home of her own, one wonders that applicants for domestic service are so persistently in the minority.’