as in France. In
England, on the other hand, it is difficult to persuade a young
girl to accept domestic service; she requires what she imagines to
be something higher, or--to use her own word--more 'genteel.' If
she be a dressmaker, or a shop girl, or a barmaid, she assumes the
title of 'young lady,' and advertises--to the disgust of all
sensible people--as such. This monstrous notion, which strikes at
the root of all social comfort, and a great deal of social
respectability, is on the increase among us. It is not quite so
rampant as it is in America, but it is tending in the same
direction. In fact, our household prospects are not promising.
Since we feel that home cookery is far from rivalling that of the
clubs, restaurants are being established in the city equal to those
of Paris, and the cartoon of _Punch_ is daily fulfilled with a
terrible accuracy. 'What has your mistress for dinner to-day?' says
the master of the house, on the doorstep, his face toward the city.
'Cold mutton, sir.' 'Cold mutton! Ah! very nice; _very_ nice. By
the by, Mary, you may just mention to your mistress that I _may_
perhaps be detained rather later than usual to-day, and she is not
to wait dinner for me.' With these things before our eyes, we
cannot but feel grateful to any one who will _bona fide_ undertake
to teach a little plain cookery. The want of this is the cause of
more waste than any other deficiency. The laboring man marries; but
he marries a woman who can add nothing to the comfort of his home;
she supplies him with more mouths to feed, and she spoils that
which is to be put into them; she becomes slatternly, feels her own
incapacity, and, finding that she can do but little of her duty,
soon leaves off trying to do it at all. As her family increases the
discomforts of her home increase, and the end is
frequently--drunkenness, violence, and appeals to the police
magistrate.'

The writer of the present article pretends to no peculiar fitness for
the investigation of this important subject, and to no more varied and
profound experience than that which has fallen to the lot of tens of
thousands of others; but much observation leads to the conviction that
the experience of any single family extending through a series of years
of housekeeping, may be taken as a type of that of all famil