them of the value that is
attached to talent and good behaviour, or to bind them to the interest
of those whom they are engaged to serve. The office of the cook
especially is attended with so many difficulties, so many disgusting and
disagreeable circumstances, and even dangers, in order to procure us one
of the greatest enjoyments of human life, that it is but justice to
reward her attention and services, by rendering her situation every way
as comfortable as we can. Those who think, that to protect and encourage
virtue is the best preventive to vice, should give their female servants
liberal wages. How else can they provide themselves the necessary
articles of clothing, and save a little to help themselves in a time of
a sickness, when out of place, or amidst the infirmities of age. The
want of liberality and of justice in this respect is a principal source
of the distress and of the degradation to which multitudes of females
are reduced, and who are driven at length to seek an asylum in Foundling
Hospitals and Female Penitentiaries.

Good wages however are not all that a faithful servant requires; kind
treatment is of far greater consequence. Human nature is the same in all
stations. If you can convince your servants that you have a generous and
considerate regard for their health and comfort, there is no reason to
imagine that they will be insensible to the good they receive. Be
careful therefore to impose no commands but what are reasonable, nor
reprove but with justice and temper; the best way to ensure which is,
not to lecture them till at least one day after the offence has been
committed. If they have any particular hardship to endure in service,
let them see that you are concerned for the necessity of imposing it.
Servants are more likely to be praised into good conduct, than scolded
out of bad behaviour. Always commend them when they do right; and to
cherish in them the desire of pleasing, it is proper to show them that
you are pleased. By such conduct ordinary servants will often be
converted into good ones, and there are few so hardened as not to feel
gratified when they are kindly and liberally treated. At the same time
avoid all approaches to familiarity, which to a proverb is accompanied
with contempt, and soon destroys the principle of obedience.

When servants are sick, you are to remember that you are their patron,
as well as their master or mistress; not only remit their labour, but
give them all th