I know that there are insolent,
sluttish, lazy, and incompetent servants, and I certainly wish to be
fair toward the mistresses; but I also know that too many of the
persons who send wild and whirling words to the newspapers belong
without doubt to the class of mean shrews. Whenever I see one of those
periodical letters which tell of the writer's lifelong tribulation, I
like to refresh my mind by repeating certain golden utterances of the
man whom we regard as one of the wisest of living Englishmen--"There
is only one way to have good servants--that is, to be worthy of being
well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and
rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the
quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are
their masters' shadows and distort their faults in a flattened
mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants'-hall, a
knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have
friends there. Only let it be remembered that 'kindness' means, as
with your child, not indulgence, but care." Substitute "mistress" for
"master" in this passage of John Ruskin's, and we have a little lesson
which the mean shrew might possibly take to heart--if she had any
heart.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131