 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS.
AGAINST all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the
curse of bachelordom! Because:
They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the
gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the ancient
and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book aloft, in an
uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your eyes.
When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the morning,
they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but, glorying in their
as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the pang their tyranny will cause
you.
Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they undo
your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has given you.
If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way, they
move the bed.
If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will stay
up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They do it on
purpose.
If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they don't,
and so they move it.
They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly
enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It is
because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and make wild
sweeps for them in the dark with the boot-jack, and swear.
They always put the match-box in some other place. They hunt up a new
place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass thing, where
the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that glass thing, groping in
the dark, and get yourself into trouble.
They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in, in the
night, you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in the
morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the slop-bucket
by the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in at midnight,
or thereabouts, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you will proceed
toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will disgust you.
They like that.
No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay there.
They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is their nature. And,
besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and contrary this way. They would
die if they couldn't be villians.
They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on the
valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap that you are
more down on than any other, and which you are gradually wearing your life
out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains you possibly can in that
direction, but it won't be of any use, because they will always fetch that old
scrap back and put it in the same old place again every time. It does them
good.
And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with purloining
the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a hereafter? Absolutely
nothing.
If you leave the key in the door for convenience sake, they will carry it down
to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the vile pretence of
trying to protect your property from thieves; but actually they do it because
they want to make you tramp back down-stairs after it when you come home
tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a waiter for it, which waiter will
expect you to pay him something. In which case I suppose the degraded
creatures divide.
They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus destroying
your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up, they don't come
any more till next day.
They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out of
pure cussedness, and nothing else.
Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.
If I can get a bill through the Legislature abolishing chambermaids, I mean
to do it.
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |