Edgeworth says, "Servants must have no communication with children if you wish to teach them the habit of speaking truth." Of whom do servants learn falsehood? Of their masters and mistresses. Is not the practice of what is called "being denied," almost universal? and are not servants instructed in this piece of falsehood? Edgworth does not disallow the custom of giving orders to say you are not at home when you are:* but a falsehood is a falsehood, and there should be no distinction between one lie and another. If we teach our servants to speak falsehood for

us, are not we at least in part to blame, and have we any right to complain if they turn our instructions against ourselves? I never yet was denied by a servant, and if I have any knowledge of my regard for truth, I never will be. It is easy to say either in person, or by a servant, you have a particular occupation which engages you at present,

* See Vol. I. p. 199, Chap. on Truth

and you think that your visitor will not be angry with you that you must pursue it. We should be better without the acquaintance of those who would take offence at such an acknowledgment. This custom of denying one's self is finely ridiculed in a dialogue between two of the ancients,* one of whom had made a visit to the other, but was told by his servant that he was out, although his friend had accidentally seen him in the house. A short time after, the visit was returned; the man himself called out that he was not at home. "How! not at home,

when you are actually speaking to me?" "I believed that you were not at home on the authority of your servant, and you will not believe that I am not, when I tell you so myself." It is matter of regret that the custom remains to be corrected in our days, or rather exists in a formidable degree.

*Scipio and Ennius.

Many writers have directed us not to make confidants of servants; but a distinction should be made between those whom we have not tried, and those who have served us long and faithfully. One of the incitements to virtue is lost if no peculiar marks of favor are to be shewn to long perseverance in it. Servants are beings of like feelings with ourselves, but the circumstances under which they were born and bred have compelled them to service, as a subsistence: they have to submit their own will entirely to the will of others. A general condition (and it is a hard one) when they enter a place is, that they shall have, as it is termed, no followers: they are thus debarred from the pleasure of occasional intercourse with their relations; or supposing an attachment of the heart, this must also be relinquished, or deceit must be practised. Let masters and mistresses, if they have feelings themselves, recollect that their servants have them likewise: let them be al

lowed the indulgencies which human nature calls for, and I much mistake if they turn out the worse for such indulgencies. To nursery maids, if of good character, peculiar kindness should be shewn. Let parents, at least let mothers recollect, that the care of children involves many unpleasant offices, which it would seem to require even maternal tenderness to perform without shrinking. If an attendant on children, merely as concerns their bodily wants, perform her duties well, she is to be valued: she submits to close confinement, to bodily fatigue, to unpleasant offices, (as already named,) to sleepless nights. Those who love their children will regard her.*

* I cannot refrain from mentioning here a class of people who seem entitled to peculiar consideration from those who have received the benefit of their services: I mean monthly nurses. Their occupa tion is one, to which Captain Barclay's journey of a thousand miles in a thousand hours, is an utter trifle; and this occupation continued perhaps for

The custom which has been recommended of speaking to servants on nothing but their business, is proper with regard to those who have been with us but a short time; but an old servant should be an humble, friend: there are few minds so utterly ignoble as

five and twenty, or thirty years: it brings on premature old age, and many diseases, the result of fatigue, and incessant watching. Women of this class I am sorry to say, from personal knowledge, are most generally left, when they are past their labour, unprovided for. To a charity for the relief of aged women, to which I had once the hanour of acting as secretary, a very great proportion of the applicants were decayed monthly nurses. Let mothers in easy

circumstances recollect that their own health, at a very precarious time, was committed to the care of such a nurse, as were likewise their infants in their first days. A respectable woman of this kind attends perhaps twenty ladies. When she is past her labour, a small contribution from each of these, weekly or quarterly, might render her old age easy and confortable. They owe this to her as a debt of gratitude, and so do their children after them.