The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 148 by Various Authors
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rporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'
can you expect either of these distinguished officers to leave the service of the United States for ours? What with intelligent contrabandism, emancipation, the right of suffrage, and the right to ride in omnibuses, we fear that their domestic usefulness will be sadly impaired.
Oh for machinery! automaton flunkies, requiring only to be wound up and kept oiled! What a housekeeping Utopia! Thomson foreshadowed a home paradise of this kind when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence:'
'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed, Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'
But as yet invention has furnished no reapers and mowers for within doors. We have only dumb waiters; poor, creaking things, that break and split, like their flesh-and-blood namesakes, and distribute the smell of the kitchen throughout the house. Heine once proposed a society to ameliorate the condition of the rich. He must have meant a model intelligence office. I wish it had been established, for we may all need its aid.
What are we to do when we come to the last of the servants? Darwin says that the Formica rufescens would perish without its slaves; we are almost as dependent as these confederate ants. Our social civilization is based upon servants. Certainly, the refinements of life, as we understand it, could not exist Without them, and it is difficult to see how any business of magnitude could be carried on. Briareus himself could not take care of a large country place, with its stables, barns, horses, cattle, and crops, even if Mrs. B. had the same physical advantages, and was willing to help him. Must we tempt them back by still larger salaries, or increase their social consideration, telling them, as a certain clergyman once said of his order, that 'they are supported, and not hired'?--changing the word help, as we have servant, into household officer or assistant manager, or adopt a Chinese euphemism, such as steward of the table or governor of the kit