COURTESY TO SERVANTS

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 4, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 42.

COURTESY TO SERVANTS.

THE servant's right to be politely treated is just as absolute and indefeasible as that of the queen. She is a child of the great King, and to her applies the royal law, according to the scripture, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." That law which is the highest of all, surely includes politeness. If we are bound to love our neighbors as ourselves, we are bound to treat them courteously at any rate. This is the first and most rudimental of all our duties to them. Your servant, dear madam, is your neighbor—the nearest of all your neighbors. She has a right, then, under this royal law—which is itself the spirit of all just laws—to be courteously treated by you. It is no more condescension for you to use respect and gentleness in your intercourse with her, than it is for her to sweep your floors or build your fires. You are entitled to no more credit for speaking kindly to her than you are for not stealing her pocket handkerchiefs. If you do not govern yourself, in all your conversation with her, by the same laws of courtesy which you observe with the callers in your parlors, you are a very vulgar person. The maid in your kitchen is a woman; the guest in your parlor is nothing more. Will you give to silks and feathers and a purse what you deny to womanhood? That is the very essence of vulgarity. Do not say that the guest never tries your temper

as the servant does. You know that many of those whom you greet with smiles tell lies about you when they are out of your sight. The laws of good manners lead you to treat their deceitfulness with forbearance. Should they not require equal forbearance toward the ignorant servant girl in your kitchen?—Hearth and Home.