It wouldn't
work. He and his wife could stand it, but the servant couldn't."
I paused, for this was where the laugh ought to have come in. The
Altrurian did not laugh, he merely asked, "Why?"
"Well, because the servant knew, if they didn't, that they were a whole
world apart in their traditions, and were no more fit to associate than
New-Englanders and New-Zealanders. In the mere matter of education--"
"But I thought you said that these young girls who wait at table here were
teachers."
"Oh, I beg your pardon; I ought to have explained. By this time it had
become impossible, as it now is, to get American girls to take service
except on some such unusual terms as we have in a summer hotel; and the
domestics were already ignorant foreigners, fit for nothing else. In such
a place as this it isn't so bad. It is more as if the girls worked in a
shop or a factory. They command their own time, in a measure, their hours
are tolerably fixed, and they have one another's society. In a private
family they would be subject to order at all times, and they would have no
social life. They would be in the family, out not of it.
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