Threads of Grey and Gold

“Cheer up,” I answered, wiping the mist from my own eyes. “Go on, and have the best time you ever had in your life, and don’t worry about me – I’ll get along somehow. And if you need money while you are away, write to me, and I’ll send you whatever you need. We’ll fix it up afterward.”

Once again she looked at me, with the strangest look I have ever seen on the human face.

“Tank you,” she said slowly. “Dere iss not many ladies would say dat.”

“Perhaps not,” I replied, “but, remember, Annie, I can trust you.”

“Yes,” she cried, her face illumined as by some great inward light, “you can trust me!”

I do not think she loves us yet, but I believe in time she will.

The day the new girl came, I happened to overhear a much valued reference to myself: “Honestly,” she said, “Ay been here more dan one year, and Ay never hear a wrong word between her and him, nor between her and me. It’s shust wonderful. Ay isn’t been see anyting like it since Ay been in diss country.”

“Is it so wonderful?” I asked myself, as I stole away, my own heart aglow with the consciousness of a moral victory, “and is the lack of self-control and human kindness at the bottom of the American servant problem? Are we women such children that we cannot deal wisely with our intellectual inferiors?” And more than all I had given her, as I realised then for the first time, was the power of self-discipline and self-control which she, all unknowingly, had developed in me.

I have not ceased the “treatment,” even though the patient is nearly well. It costs me nothing to praise her when she deserves it, to take an occasional friend into her immaculate kitchen, and to show the shining white pantry shelves (without papers), while she blushes and smiles with pleasure. It costs me nothing to see that she overhears me while I tell a friend over the telephone how capable she has been during the stress of my work, or how clean the house is when we come home after a long absence. It costs me nothing to send her out for a walk, or a visit to a nearby friend, on the afternoons when her work is finished and I am to be at home – nothing to call her attention to a beautiful sunset or a perfect day, or to tell her some amusing story that her simple mind can appreciate. It costs me nothing to tell her how well she looks in her cap and apron (only I call the cap a “hair-bow”), nor that one of the guests said she made the best cake she had ever eaten in her life.

It costs me little to give her a pretty hatpin, or some other girlish trifle at Easter, to bring her some souvenir of our travels, to give her a fresh ribbon for her belt from my bolt, or some little toy “for de children.”

It means only a thought to say when she goes out, “Good-bye! Have a good time!” or to say when I go out, “Good-bye! Be good!” It means little to me to tell her how much my husband or our guests have enjoyed the dinner, or to have him go into the kitchen sometimes, while she is surrounded by a mountain of dishes, with a cheery word and a fifty-cent piece.

It isn’t much out of my way to do a bit of shopping for her when I am shopping for myself, and no trouble at all to plan for her new gowns, or to tell her that her new hat is very pretty and becoming.

When her temper gets the better of her these days, I can laugh her out of it. “To think,” I said once, “of a fine, capable girl like you flying into a rage because some one has borrowed your clothesline without asking for it!”

The clouds vanished with a smile. “Dat iss funny of me,” she said.

When her work goes wrong, as of course it sometimes does, though rarely, and she is worrying for fear I shall be displeased, I say: “Never mind, Annie; things don’t always go right for any of us. Don’t worry about it, but be careful next time.”

It has cost me time and effort and money, and an infinite amount of patience and tact, not to mention steady warfare with myself, but in return, what have I? A housemaid, as nearly perfect, perhaps, as they can ever be on this faulty earth, permanently in my service, as I hope and believe.

If any one offers her higher wages, I shall meet the “bid,” for she is worth as much to me as she can be to any one else. Besides giving me superior service, she has done me a vast amount of good in furnishing me the needed material for the development of my character.

On her own ground, she respects my superior knowledge. Once or twice I have heard her say of some friend, “Her’s lady, she know nodding at all about de housekeeping – no, nodding at all!”

The airy contempt of the tone is quite impossible to describe.

A neighbour whom she assisted in a time of domestic stress, during my absence, told me amusedly of her reception in her own kitchen. “You don’t have to come all de time to de kitchen to tell me,” remarked Annie.

“Doesn’t Mrs. M. do that?” queried my neighbour, lightly.

“Ay should say not,” returned the capable one, indignantly. “She nefer come in de kitchen, and she know, too!”

While that was not literally true, because I do go into my kitchen if I want to, and cook there if I like, I make a point of not intruding. She knows what she is to do, and I leave her to do it, in peace and comfort.

Briefly summarised, the solution from my point of view is this. Know her work yourself, down to the last detail; pay the wages which other people would be glad to pay for the same service; keep your temper, and, in the face of everything, be kind! Remember that housework is hard work – that it never stays done – that a meal which it takes half a day to prepare is disposed of in half an hour. Remember, too, that it requires much intelligence and good judgment to be a good cook, and that the daily tasks lack inspiration. The hardest part of housework must be done at a time when many other people are free for rest and enjoyment, and it carries with it a social bar sinister when it is done for money. The woman who does it for her board and clothes, in her own kitchen, does not necessarily lose caste, but doing it for a higher wage, in another’s kitchen, makes one almost an outcast. Strange and unreasonable, but true.

It was at my own suggestion that she began to leave the dishes piled up in the sink until morning. When the room is otherwise immaculate, a tray of neatly piled plates, even if unwashed, does not disturb my æsthetic sense.

Ordinarily, she is free for the evening at half-past seven or a quarter of eight – always by eight. Her evenings are hers, not mine, – unless I pay her extra, as I always do. A dollar or so counts for nothing in the expense of an entertainment, and she both earns and deserves the extra wage.

If I am to entertain twenty or thirty people – the house will hold no more, and I cannot ask more than ten to dinner – I consult with her, decide upon the menu, tell her that she can have all the help she needs, and go my ways in peace. I can order the flowers, decorate the table, put on my best gown, and receive my guests, unwearied, with an easy mind.

When I am not expecting guests, I can leave the house immediately after breakfast, without a word about dinner, and return to the right sort of a meal at seven o’clock, bringing a guest or two with me, if I telephone first.

I can work for six weeks or two months in a seclusion as perfect as I could have in the Sahara Desert, and my household, meanwhile, will move as if on greased skids. I can go away for two months and hear nothing from her, and yet know that everything is all right at home. I think no more about it, so far as responsibility is concerned, when I am travelling, than as if I had no home at all. When we leave the apartment alone in the evening, we turn on the most of the lights, being assured by the police that burglars will never molest a brilliantly illuminated house.

The morose countenance of my ugly maid has subtly changed. It radiates, in its own way, beauty and good cheer. Her harsh voice is gentle, her manner is kind, her tastes are becoming refined, her ways are those of a lady.

My friends and neighbours continually allude to the transformation as “a miracle.” The janitor remarked, in a burst of confidence, that he “never saw anybody change so.” He “reckoned,” too, that “it must be the folks she lives with!” Annie herself, conscious of a change, recently said complacently: “Ay guess Ay wass one awful crank when Ay first come here.”

And so it happens that the highest satisfaction is connected with the beautiful theory, triumphantly proven now, against heavy odds. Whatever else I may have done, I have taught one woman the workman’s pride in her work, shown her where true happiness lies, and set her feet firmly on the path of right and joyous living.

To a Violin

    (Antonius Stradivarius, 1685.)

What flights of years have gone to fashion thee,
My violin! What centuries have wrought
Thy sounding fibres! What dead fingers taught
Thy music to awake in ecstasy
Beyond our human dreams? Thy melody
Is resurrection. Every buried thought
Of singing bird, or stream, or south wind, fraught
With tender message, or of sobbing sea,
Lives once again. The tempest’s solemn roll
Is in thy passion sleeping, till the king
Whose touch is mastery shall sound thy soul.
The organ tones of ocean shalt thou bring,
The crashing chords of thunder, and the whole
Vast harmony of God. Ah, Spirit, sing!

The Old Maid

One of the best things the last century has done for woman is to make single-blessedness appear very tolerable indeed, even if it be not actually desirable.

The woman who didn’t marry used to be looked down upon as a sort of a “leftover” without a thought, apparently, that she may have refused many a chance to change her attitude toward the world. But now, the “bachelor maid” is welcomed everywhere, and is not considered eccentric on account of her oneness.

With the long records of the divorce courts before their eyes, it is not very unusual for the younger generation of women nowadays deliberately to choose spinsterhood as their independent lot in life.

A girl said the other day: “It’s no use to say that a woman can’t marry if she wants to. Look around you, and see the women who have married, and then ask yourself if there is anybody who can’t!”

This is a great truth very concisely stated. It is safe to say that no woman ever reached twenty-five years of age, and very few have passed twenty, without having an opportunity to become somebody’s mate.

A very small maiden with very bright eyes once came to her mother with the question: “Mamma, do you think I shall ever have a chance to get married?”

And the mother answered: “Surely you will, my child; the woods are full of offers of marriage – no woman can avoid them.”

And ere many years had passed the maiden had learned that the wisdom of her mother’s prophecy was fully vindicated.