nd with her the following dialogue took place:--'"Can
you wash your own clothes?" "Never did such a thing in my life." "Can
you make a dress?" "No." "Cook?" "No." "What _can_ you do?" "Why,
ma'am, I could look after the servants; I could direct them: I should
make an excellent housekeeper." "You are certain?" "Yes, or I would
not say so." "Do you know the quantity of the different ingredients
wanted for a beefsteak-pie of the size of that dish, and a
rice-pudding of the same size?" "O no, ma'am--that's not what I meant:
_I'd see that the servants did it!_" "But there might be great waste,
and you not know it; besides, all, or nearly all, the servants sent to
this colony require teaching."

'Nothing, observes Mrs Chisholm, but my faith in Providence, that
there must be a place fitting for every body in society, enabled me to
bear such inflictions: this faith made me labour in seeking some
suitable employment for each, and had I not possessed it, but turned
them out, their fate would have been inevitable and horrible.'

The business of attending to the 'Home,' and finding places for
everybody, was not without some pleasant excitement. Mrs Chisholm was
sometimes asked to find wives as well as servants; and as a specimen
of applications on this delicate head, she gives the following amusing
epistle, which is printed as she received it:--

'"REVEREND MADAM--I heard you are the best to send to for a servant,
and I heard our police magistrate say, it was best to leave all to
you; and so I'll just do the same, as his honour says it's the best. I
had a wife once, and so she was too good for me by the far, and it was
God's will, ma'am; but I has a child, ma'am, that I wouldn't see a
straw touch for the world; the boy's only four yeare old: and I has a
snug fifty-acre farm and a town 'lotment, and I has no debts in the
world, and one teem and four bullocks; and I'se ten head oh cattle,
and a share on eight hundred sheep, so I as a rite to a desent
servant, that can wash and cook and make the place decant; and I don't
mind what religion she bey, if she is sober and good, only I'se a
Protestant myself; and the boy I have, I promised the mother on her
death-bed should be a Catholic, and I won't, anyhow, have any
interference in this here matter. That I do like in writing nothing
else, I wouldn't, mam, on any account in the world, be bound to marry;
but I don't wish it altogether to be left out. I'll ge her fourteen
wages, and if s