They form
themselves into societies or rather confederacies, contributing to the
maintenance of each other when out of place, and if any of them cannot
manage the family where they are entertained, as they please, immediately
they give notice they will be gone. There is no speaking to them, they
are above correction, and if a master should attempt it, he may expect to
be handsomely drubbed by the creature he feeds and harbors, or perhaps an
action brought against him for it. It is become a common saying, _If my
servant ben't a thief, if he be but honest, I can bear with other
things._ And indeed it is very rare in London to meet with an honest
servant."[142] Southey writes to his daughter Edith, in 1824, "All the
maids eloped because I had turned a man out of the kitchen at eleven
o'clock on the preceding night." Nay, Hugh Rhodes, in his _Boke of
Nurture_(1577), speaks of servants "ofte fleeting," i.e. leaving one
master for another.
One of the most curious things revealed to us in these volumes is the
fact that John Winthrop, Jr., was seeking the philosopher's stone, that
universal elixir which could transmute all things to its own substance.
This is plain from the correspondence of Edward Howes. Howes goes to a
certain doctor, professedly to consult him about the method of making a
cement for earthen vessels, no doubt crucibles.
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