In it there is no real end to the day, and in small households,
the pursuit and oversight, and often the "nagging," of the
employer, or, in other words, the presence of an exacting,
semi-hostile, and slightly contemptuous person is constant. This
and confinement in a half-dark kitchen produce that nervous
crisis which sends male mechanics and other male laborers,
engaged in monotonous callings, off "on a spree." In Bridget's
case it works itself off by a change of place, with a few days of
squalid repose among "her own people" in a tenement-house.
As regards her general bearing as a member of a household, she
has to contend with three great difficulties--ignorance of
civilized domestic life, for which she is no more to blame than
Russian moujiks; difference of race and creed on the part of her
employer (and this is one which the servants of no other country
have to contend with); and lastly, the strong contempt for
domestic service felt and manifested by all that portion of the
American population with which she comes in contact, and to which
it is her great ambition to assimilate herself.
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