People
meet, in the relations of master and servant, who have lived in two
different worlds. In this respect we are much worse situated than the
same parties have been in Europe. There is less previous acquaintance
between the upper and lower classes. (We must, though unwillingly, use
these terms to designate the state of things as at present existing.)
Meals are taken separately; work is seldom shared; there is very
little to bring the parties together, except sometimes the farmer
works with his hired Irish laborer in the fields, or the mother keeps
the nurse-maid of her baby in the room with her.
In this state of things the chances for instruction, which come every
day of themselves where parties share a common life instead of its
results merely, do not occur. Neither is there opportunity to
administer instruction in the best manner, nor to understand when and
where it is needed.
The farmer who works with his men in the field, the farmer's wife who
attends with her women to the churn and the oven, may, with ease, be
true father and mother to all who are in their employ, and enjoy
health of conscience in the relation, secure that, if they find cause
for blame, it is not from faults induced by their own negligence.
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