The Instructions of Ptah-Hotep
On Hired Servants
Satisfy your hired servants out of such things as you have; it is the duty of one that has been favored of the God. In sooth, it is hard to satisfy hired servants. For one says, 'He is a lavish person; one knows not that which may come [from him].' But on the morrow he thinks, 'He is a person of exactitude (parsimony), content therein.'
And when favors have been shown unto servants, they say, 'We go.'
Peace dwells not in that town wherein dwell servants that are wretched.
