e only I hired a cook who
accepted these terms. I am bound to say she sent us up a most excellent
dinner, but when I sent for her to pay the half-guinea she was dead
drunk on the kitchen floor. She had taken a bottle of port wine and one
of stout while serving up that entertainment, and afterwards confessed
that during her arduous duties she required 'constant support.' Again,
it is by no means unusual for cooks to succeed to admiration for a week
and then to begin to spoil everything, the proverb respecting a 'new
broom' applying, curiously enough, even more to them than to the
'housemaids.'

These observations are no doubt severe, but they are not unjust; nor do
I for a moment imply that servants are always to blame, and never
mistresses. There are faults on both sides. Ladies often show
themselves as 'unreasonable' as their female domestics. For example,
although very solicitous for the settlement of their own daughters in
life, they often do not give sufficient opportunities for their
maid-servants to find husbands. A girl in service is quite as anxious
to get a husband as her young mistresses, and, indeed, it is of much
more consequence for her to do so. She sees her youth slipping away
from her in a place where no 'followers' are allowed, and it is no
wonder that she 'wants a change.' She has a right to have her holidays
and her 'Sundays out,' and it is the mistress's duty not only to grant
them, but to make some inquiry as to how she spends them. Many ladies
who go to church with much regularity never take the smallest interest
in the moral conduct of those to whom they stand, morally if not
legally, _in loco parentis_, and who may, perhaps, have no other
adviser.

Mistresses of all ranks, too, show a lamentable want of principle in
the matter of character-giving. It wants, no doubt, a certain strength
of mind to write the truth. 'The girl is going, thank Heaven,' they say
to themselves, and they are glad to get rid of her, without a row, at
the easy price of a small falsehood. They lay the flattering unction to
their souls that they are concealing certain facts in order 'not to
stand in the way of the poor girl's future.' What they are really doing
is an act of selfishness, cruel as regards the lady who is trusting to
their word, and baneful as regards the public good. It is the good
characters which make the bad servants. In a certain primitive district
of England, where ministers are 'called' from parish to