her waitress must spend the evening in dull solitude on the chance that
a caller or two may ring the door-bell.

A conscientious employer once remarked to the writer: "In England it
must be much easier; the maid does not look and dress so like your
daughter, and you can at least pretend that she doesn't like the same
things. But really, my new waitress is quite as pretty and stylish as my
daughter is, and her wistful look sometimes when Mary goes off to a
frolic quite breaks my heart."

Too many employers of domestic service have always been exempt from
manual labor, and therefore constantly impose exacting duties upon
employees, the nature of which they do not understand by experience;
there is thus no curb of rationality imposed upon the employer's
requirements and demands. She is totally unlike the foreman in a shop,
who has only risen to his position by way of having actually performed
with his own hands all the work of the men he directs. There is also
another class of employers of domestic labor, who grow capricious and
over-exacting through sheer lack of larger interests to occupy their
minds; it is equally bad for them and the employee that the duties of
the latter are not clearly defined. Tolstoy contends that an exaggerated
notion of cleanliness has developed among such employers, which could
never have been evolved among usefully employed people. He points to the
fact that a serving man, in order that his hands may be immaculately
clean, is kept from performing the heavier work of the household, and
then is supplied with a tray, upon which to place a card, in order that
even his clean hands may not touch it; later, even his clean hands are
covered with a pair of clean white gloves, which hold the tray upon
which the card is placed.