(_To be continued_.)

* * * * *



NOTES OF A READER.


DOMESTIC LIFE IN AMERICA.

_Servants_.

The following sketch of what the Americans feel on this point, from Mrs.
Trollope's _Domestic Manners of the Americans_, is clever and amusing:--

"The greatest difficulty in organizing a family establishment in Ohio is
getting servants, or, as it is there called, 'getting help,' for it is
more than petty treason to the republic to call a free citizen a _servant_.
The whole class of young women, whose bread depends upon their labour, are
taught to believe that the most abject poverty is preferable to domestic
service. Hundreds of half-naked girls work in the paper-mills, or in any
other manufactory, for less than half the wages they would receive in
service: but they think their equality is compromised by the latter, and
nothing but the wish to obtain some particular article of finery will ever
induce them to submit to it. A kind friend, however, exerted herself so
effectually for me, that a tall stately lass soon presented herself,
saying, 'I be come to help you.' The intelligence was very agreeable, and
I welcomed her in the most gracious manner possible, and asked what I