In Ottawa, certainly, there is no demand for emigrants, unless it be good female servants, who are wanted much more, and can have much more comfortable living, at home. A lady asked me to send her a few good servants from England. I replied that my wife wanted them as much as she did, and that it was my duty to attend to her requirements first.
It is curious the airs the raw servant-girls from Ireland give themselves out here. One day, when I was at Peterborough, one of the head-quarters of the lumber trade—which yesterday was a dense forest, and is now a town of 8,000 people—I heard of the arrival of a lot of girls from Galway. The drill-hall was set apart for their use, and there they were respectfully waited on by the chief ladies of the district in need of that rarest of created beings—a good maid-of-all-work. In this particular case one of the arrivals was fixed on.
No, she would not. Would she accept of nine? Oh no! Would she take ten? Certainly not.
‘What do you want?’ said the lady, beginning to be alarmed.
‘They told me I was to have twelve dollars a month,’ said the girl, and that put a stop to the negotiation.
When I state that an English sovereign is worth at this time four dollars and eighty-six cents, I think you will agree with me that this charming daughter of Erin somewhat overrated the value of her services. The Canadians are a well-to-do people, but they cannot afford twelve dollars a month for a mere housemaid. I think it would be well if the respectable young women—of whom there are thousands in England who do not care for the pittance given to a governess, and who prefer the life of a lady-help—were to come out. They would soon be appreciated.
The average girl selected to be sent out to the colony, so far as I have seen her, is not a model of loveliness or utility. Were I a Canadian mother, I would sooner have a lady-help. Nor need the lady-help be afraid of the roughness of her lot. In Ontario, all the difficulties of the pioneers of civilization have long since disappeared. One hears strange tales of what those brave men and delicately nurtured ladies had to suffer.
I have seen two—whom I had known when a boy—who were familiar with the best of London literary society, who figured in all the annuals of the season, who were famous in their day, whose sires came over with William the Conqueror. They were sisters, and married two officers, who had land allotted to them in Canada, and brought out these wellborn and delicately nurtured women into what was then a waste, howling wilderness, where they had to slave as no servant-girl slaves in England, and to fight with the severity of the climate in a way of which the present generation of Canadians have no idea. Only think, for instance, of your joint roasting at the fire on one side and freezing on the other! In the settled parts of Canada, such horrors are now amongst the pleasant reminiscences of the past.