by disappointment. Very young servants frequently take pride in their work, though of the most laborious kind, and many a young girl might be proud to improve in the more refined departments of housewifery, and would regard a little congratulation upon the lightness of her pastry, or the excellence of her cakes, as worth ten times all the thought and care which she had bestowed upon them. There is no mistress who does not acknowledge the importance of a servant who can assist in preserving, pickling, wine-making, and other things of this description, which demand both skill and labour, and which must, where there is no one but the mistress herself sufficiently acquainted with them to be trusted, take up much of her time and give her considerable trouble.
To teach poor children to become useful servants, may, perhaps, be thought a serious task; but it surely cannot be said that this sort of instruction is at all more difficult than that which is necessary to give them even a tolerable proficiency in the lowest branches of literature. The learning here recommended, seems naturally more inviting, as well as more needful, than that which is taught in the ordinary course of school education; and it possesses this advantage, that while its benefits are equally lasting, they are immediately perceptible. It is sometimes said that the poor are ungrateful, and that after all the pains and trouble which may have been taken in making them good servants, it often happens, that instead of testifying a proper sense of the obligation, they become restless, and desirous of leaving those who have had all the trouble of qualifying them for better places and higher wages. Servants cannot be prevented from bettering themselves, as they call it, but that constant changing of place which operates as one of the worst examples to young women who are at service, would become less frequent if their employments were occasionally varied by relaxation and amusement, and their services now and then rewarded by small presents. The influence of early habits is so universally felt and acknowledged, that it seems almost superfluous to ask why an early and industrious education of the poor, and the teaching of the youth of both sexes to look upon prosperity and right endeavour as inseparable, should not produce a taste, the reverse of that which leads to a discontented and unsettled existence.
