oned into their dickies, while one week every
pocket-handkerchief in the house was starched so stiff that you
might as well have carried an earthen plate in your pocket; the
tumblers looked muddy; the plates were never washed clean or wiped dry
unless I attended to each one; and as to eating and drinking, we
experienced a variety that we had not before considered possible.

At length the old woman vanished from the stage, and was succeeded by
a knowing, active, capable damsel, with a temper like a steel-trap,
who remained with me just one week, and then went off in a fit of
spite. To her succeeded a rosy, good-natured, merry lass, who broke
the crockery, burned the dinner, tore the clothes in ironing, and
knocked down everything that stood in her way about the house, without
at all discomposing herself about the matter. One night she took the
stopper from a barrel of molasses, and came singing off upstairs,
while the molasses ran soberly out into the cellar bottom all night,
till by morning it was in a state of universal emancipation. Having
done this, and also dispatched an entire set of tea things by letting
the waiter fall, she one day made her disappearance.

Then, for a wonder, there fell to my lot a tidy, efficient, trained
English girl; pretty, and genteel, and neat, and knowing how to do
everything, and with the sweetest temper in the world. "Now," said I
to myself, "I shall rest from my labors." Everything about the house
began to go right, and looked as clean and genteel as Mary's own
pretty self. But, alas! this period of repose was interrupted by the
vision of a clever, trim-looking young man, who for some weeks could
be heard scraping his boots at the kitchen door every Sunday night;
and at last Miss Mary, with some smiling and blushing, gave me to
understand that she must leave in two weeks.

"Why, Mary," said I, feeling a little mischievous, "don't you like the
place?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am."

"Then why do you look for another?"

"I am not going to another place."

"What, Mary, are you going to learn a trade?"

"No, ma'am."

"Why, then, what do you mean to do?"

"I expect to keep house myself, ma'am," said she, laughing and
blushing.

"Oh ho!" said I, "that is it;" and so in two weeks I lost the best
little girl in the world: peace to her memory.

After this came an interregnum, which put me in mind of the chapter in
Chronicles that I used to read with great delight when a child, where
Basha,