CHAPTER XXV.

HABITS OF SERVICE.

Proverbs or Verses.

"A service done by the unwilling is no service." "He who serves many masters must neglect some." "He who will not serve one must needs serve many." "Small service is true service while it lasts."-Wordsworth. "Unwilling service earns no thanks."-Danish.

"Whoever serves well and says nothing makes claim enough.'

"A servant is known by his master's absence."

"A good servant makes a good master."

"All men cannot be masters."

"Be the first in the field and the last to the couch."

"Honest labor bears a lovely face."

"Deem no man in any age,

Gentle for his lineage.

Tho' he be not highly born

He is gentle if he doth

What belongeth to a gentleman."-Chaucer.

"Thou camest not to command, but to serve."-Thomas à Kempis.

Dialogue.

Why is it, do you suppose, that a person rather hates to be called a servant? This is not always true. And it ought never to be true. Still it does happen. Can you suggest any reason for it?

What if some one, for instance, a boy or girl of about your age, should call you their servant, would you like it? "Probably not," you admit. Why not? I ask. What harm would it do?

"Why," you suggest, "it would sound as if they owned us, in a way, or as if we had to do just what they told us. And we should feel as if we did not exactly belong to ourselves."

Yes, I add, but you may have to do this with regard

to your fathers or mothers. They control you and you must do what they say. "Oh well," you tell me, “in that case it is one's father and one's mother."

You mean, do you, that your father and mother do not exactly own you? "No," you assert, "they have a right to control us, because they are our parents and are older than we are and have more experience."

What is the actual reason, then, that we do not like to be servants, under any circumstances? "As to that," you suggest, "perhaps it is because as long as we are servants, we cannot do as we please. We must do as other people please. And so it rather makes us rebel."

I want to be sure now, that I know what you mean. Do you suppose that there is a living person in the world who can do altogether as he pleases? "Why, surely," you say. Well, who, for example?

"Why," you continue, "a king or a czar, the man who rules over a country." Yes, that is often asserted. People often talk about what a fine thing it would be to become a czar. You assume, do you, that such a person can do as he pleases?

But do you suppose a czar is ever afraid? "Yes," you answer, "that might happen. Perhaps there might be plots against his life." Would he like this? "Not a bit of it," you confess.

Then how might he act in order to escape from the necessity of being afraid? "Oh, that would be easy enough," you point out. "He could have police and they could look after him."

Yes, but do you know that sometimes in such countries where they have a very strong police, the czar is still very much afraid? We are told that there are times over in Russia when the czar has to stay shut in his palace for weeks, in fear lest something may happen to him. And yet he has a great many police to look after him.

What else could he do besides this in order to avoid the necessity of being afraid? "Well," you reply, "he might try to please the people and make them like him,

so that they would not want to injure him." In doing that, do you think he would be doing all the time exactly as he pleased?

"Probably not," you tell me. "It may be he would do this just in order to escape danger to himself." Then, I ask you, is he altogether a free man, even if he is a czar? Is he not to some extent a servant? Is he not compelled to do what he may not like to do? "Perhaps so," you admit.

Then I must ask you further. A servant of whom? Who are the masters to whom he must sometimes be of service? "Why," you tell me, "the people he is placed to rule over." It turns out, then, does it, that a czar or a king must also sometimes be a servant and do things for the people, even if he does not care to do this; or when he would much rather be amusing himself?

If that is true, even a czar or any sort of a king must give up his own pleasures at times and do work for the people he rules over. Then does he not have to do service? Is he not in a sense, partially a servant? "To some extent," you confess.

Why is it, can you tell me, that this notion of being somebody else's servant has been connected with the idea of being owned by somebody, as if the servant was another person's property?

"Oh, that may have come," you suggest, "from former times when there were slaves, and men and women were owned by the persons whom they served." Owned in what way, do you mean? Do you think that it ever happened that they were owned in a sense that they, could be bought and sold? "Certainly," you insist.

Do you fancy it ever happened that their masters could punish them by putting them to death? "Perhaps so," you admit.

Yes. Over in Africa, now, in some places a master may put his servant to death because he is angry with him. But you must remember that this implies slavery.

In what way would you assume that being a slave

differed from being a servant, as we understand the word "servant" nowadays?

"Well, for instance," you explain, "the servant is paid wages, whereas the slave had no wages, but only received whatever the master chose to give him. And what is more than that, the servant can spend his money or his wages as he pleases."

Is that all? "No, more than that," you continue, "the servant can change his place if he wants to, he I can decide with whom he will work or for whom he will do service." Yes, that is perfectly true.

"Then, too," you add, "the servant cannot be punished in the same way as the slave. He cannot be struck or whipped or starved."

You say, however, that being a servant implies not being able to have one's own way or do as one pleases. This, of course, was true of slavery. But can one as a servant never do as one likes-never, at all?

"Oh, yes," you suggest, "he may have to do what another person asks of him for a certain length of time, so many hours in a day. After that he may be free to go his own way."

It looks then, as if there was a sharp distinction between being a slave and being a servant.

What class of persons, however, especially go under the name of "servants" nowadays. "Why," you say, "those who do service in our homes.”

But is there any real difference that you can see between one who does service of that kind, and the clerk in the store or the man who is a bookkeeper, or one who has to work in an office for an employer?

"Yes," you point out, "the servant lives in the house where he or she works." But, after all, isn't it a distinction about a name more than anything else?

You see, every person who works for wages or for pay of any kind, during the time when he is working, is a servant to another or to others. He must do what others tell him, at least up to a certain point.

Do you assume therefore that people really at such times belong to their employer, that they are his prop

erty? "No, not at all," you insist. What is it then, that belongs to him, if they are working for pay?

"Why," you continue, "their time is his, or the work that they do for a certain time in the day belongs to him. He has a right to direct them or their efforts during that time.”

Yes, that is true. Their time belongs to the employer. But does it belong to him altogether. Has the employer a right to make them do anything he pleases? Is he the owner altogether of their time and their work?

"No," you answer, "only for the kind of work one has agreed to do. Up to that point a man's work and time belongs to the person who employs him, and up to that point he is a servant."

Do you suppose it happens that the employer also may be a servant? Take, for instance, a factory. There may be a foreman who employs the men doing the work in the factory, and those men have to obey him in their work. But is he not also employed by others? "Yes," you admit.

"But then," you continue, "the man at the head of the firm, the president or manager, he is not a servant." How do you know that? I ask. What if he is the officer of a company, who elect him as the president? Then if he does not manage the business in a certain way, or make it profitable, he may lose his position and somebody else may be elected as president. Is he not, then, a servant? "Yes, in a sense," you answer, "he is the servant of the company."

It seems, does it, that even while we may be servants of one set of persons, they may be servants of other sets of persons. And so it goes on. The President of the United States, is really a servant and nothing else. He has to do what the people command him to do.

What is it, however, that people usually do service for? "Oh," you tell me, “in order to earn one's living, for wages or salary, in order to make money."

Yes, that is quite true. But is this the whole reason? Does a man always go into the business or take up the