ed duties completely. But the great proportion of the
servant's duties consists merely in drudgery that the stupidities of our
present-day method of house construction entail, and which the more
sanely constructed house of the future will avoid. Consider, for
instance, the wanton disregard of avoidable toil displayed in building
houses with a service basement without lifts! Then most dusting and
sweeping would be quite avoidable if houses were wiselier done. It is
the lack of proper warming appliances which necessitates a vast amount
of coal carrying and dirt distribution, and it is this dirt mainly that
has so painfully to be removed again. The house of the future will
probably be warmed in its walls from some power-generating station, as,
indeed, already very many houses are lit at the present day. The lack of
sane methods of ventilation also enhances the general dirtiness and
dustiness of the present-day home, and gas-lighting and the use of
tarnishable metals, wherever possible, involve further labour. But air
will enter the house of the future through proper tubes in the walls,
which will warm it and capture its dust, and it will be spun out again
by a simple mechanism. And by simple devices such sweeping as still
remains necessary can be enormously lightened. The fact that in existing
homes the skirting meets the floor at right angles makes sweeping about
twice as troublesome as it will be when people have the sense and
ability to round off the angle between wall and floor.

So one great lump of the servant's toil will practically disappear. Two
others are already disappearing. In many houses there are still the
offensive duties of filling lamps and blacking boots to be done. Our
coming house, however, will have no lamps to need filling, and, as for
the boots, really intelligent people will feel the essential ugliness of
wearing the evidence of constant manual toil upon their persons. They
will wear sorts of shoes and boots that can be cleaned by wiping in a
minute or so. Take now the bedroom work. The lack of ingenuity in
sanitary fittings at present forbids the obvious convenience of hot and
cold water supply to the bedroom, and there is a mighty fetching and
carrying of water and slops to be got through daily. All that will
cease. Every bedroom will have its own bath-dressing room which any
well-bred person will be intelligent and considerate enough to use and
leave without the slightest disarrangement. This, so