The Adventures of a Suburbanite by Ellis Parker Butler

MARY was one of the most faithful servants a family ever had. Her faithfulness deserves this monument. She was a Pole and she could not pronounce her own name. She tried to pronounce it the first day she came to us, but along toward the sixth or seventh syllable she became confused and had to give it up. She said it was Schneider in English. Perhaps the reason she remained with us so long was because she had brought her Polish name with her, and it was too much trouble to move it from place to place. When she once got in a place, she liked to stay there. But "Schneider" was about the only English word she knew, and this made it a little difficult to explain to her that I had domesticated the automobile and would allow her to use it on wash day. I had to make a picture of it, and even then she seemed rather doubtful about it.

As a matter of fact it was all very simple, but Mary Schneider was stupid. We already had the washing machine, and we had the automobile, and it was only necessary to connect the rear wheel of the automobile with the drive wheel of the washing machine by means of a belt, jack up the rear axle of the automobile, and start the engine. I hoped in time to go further than this and hitch up the coffee mill, the carpet-sweeper, the ice-cream freezer, and all our other household machinery, and then Mary Schneider would have a very easy time of it. She could have sat in the automobile with her hands on the speed levers and the work would have done itself. But Mary would not sit in the automobile. She tried to explain that she had seen me sit in it and that the Schneiders, as a family, had very brittle bones and could not afford to fall out of automobiles of such height, but I could not understand what she was saying.