Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 69, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1914 — SERVANTS WHO SMOKE. [ARTICLE]

SERVANTS WHO SMOKE.

A New Problem That Confronts the English Housekeeper. “Parlor maid wanted in small iamily. Abstainer and non-smoker,” was the somewhat startling advertisement which appeared recently in a London daily. Nowadays it is quite necessary, writes a correspondent of the London Tribune, for a mistress to inquire whether a maid is addicted to the cigarette craze, for the smoking habit has invaded the servant’s hall, and kitchen maids, cooks and upper house maids now openly adopt the cigarette consuming customs of their smart set sisters. The writer saw a well turned out nurse the other day In Hyde Park wheeling an expensive looking mail cart containing an elaborately dressed baby. The nurse was coquettishly smoking a cigarette and attracting considerable attention from the astonished passerby. At several registry offices inquiries show that the smoking habits of the domestic servant are a recognized fact.- In some families it is quite customary for parlor maid, housemaid and cook to enjoy their cigarettes in company below stairs. —That the working girl should take to smoking In Imitation of the lady Is by no means surprising. So many women of the highest - social class nowadays smoke in restaurants after meals, and at all hourß in hotel lounges, that the filtering down of a taste for the weed to a more humble,stratum of society was only to be expected. “Like mistress, like maid” applies to cigarettes as much as to clothes and hats, and the lady of the house who-consumes her ten to fifteen cigarettes a day can hardly, with logic and consistency, take her house-maid to task for indulging in the imitation which is said to be the sincerest form of flattery. The fact that it is a forbidden pleasure makes it the more alluring. The maidservant takes a sample from her mistress’s silver cigarette case, tries, tastes, an<j finds it good. Her mistress declares that she smokes because she is tired, and needs a soothing restorer. The maid is tired, too, and thinks what is good sauce for upstairs will probably prove equally pleasant for consumption in the basement. For this reason ladies in search of servants should make a point of inquiring whether the new housemaid or the nurse just engaged is a nonsmoker.