Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: errand of the good lady's, to let me know that this was lady Lillycraft, a sister of the Squire's of large fortune, which the captain would inherit, and that her estate lay in one of the best sporting counties in all England. FAMILY SERVANTS. Verily old servants are the vouchers of worthy housekeeping. They are like rats in a mansion, or mites in a cheese, bespeaking the antiquity and fatness of their abode. In my casual anecdotes of the Hall, I may often be tempted to dwell on circumstances of a trite and ordinary nature, from their appearing to me illustrative of genuine national character. It seems to be the study of the Squire to adhere, as much as possible, to what he considers the old landmarks of English manners. His servants all understand his ways, and for the most part have been accustomed to them from infancy; so that, upon the whole, his household presents one of the few tolerable specimens that can now be met with, of the establishment of an English country gentleman of the old school. By the by, the servants are not the least characteristic part of the household: the housekeeper, for instance, has heen horn and brought up at the Hall, and has never been twenty miles from it; yet shehas a stately air, that would not disgrace a lady that had figured at the court of Queen Elizabeth. I am half inclined to think that she has caught it from living so much among the old family pictures. It may, however, be owing to a consciousness of her importance in the sphere in which she has always moved; for she is greatly respected in the neighbouring village, and among the farmers' wives, and has high authority in the household, ruling over the servants with quiet, but undisputed sway. She is a thin old lady, with blue eyes and pointed nose and chin. Her dress is a...
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