It may be said, indeed, that when you employ a young girl who has never been out to service before, you secure honesty, chastity, and sobriety, and must not look for the artificial virtues; but, unhappily, things are not very much better when you engage an experienced hand.  The lady of the house should not, of course, expect too much (in these days she must be of a very sanguine temperament if she falls into that error); she will think it necessary to warn the new arrival—­although she ‘knows her place’ and is ’a thorough housemaid’—­that a velvet pile carpet, for example, should not be brushed backwards.  But on more obvious matters she will probably leave the ‘thorough housemaid’ to her own devices, the result of which is that the boards beside the stair-carpets are washed with soda the first morning, which takes the dirt off effectually—­and the paint also.  An hour or two before she was caught at this, she has, perhaps, utterly spoilt a polished grate or two by rubbing them with scouring paper instead of emery powder.

Paterfamilias feels these things when he has to pay the bill, but his wife feels them in the meantime, and it is more than is to be expected of human nature that she can welcome cordially such an addition to her household.  A prejudice against the girl springs up in her mind, which is very promptly responded to, and the mutual respect that ought to grow up between them is nipped in the bud.  I am sorry to say that good housewives are almost always opposed to having servants well educated; they think that ‘knowledge puffs up,’ blows them above their places, and encourages a taste for light literature which is opposed to the arts of brushing and cleaning.  What the ‘higher education’ of domestic servants is to be under the School Boards I know not; but I hope they will not imagine, as the Universities do, that their duty is only to teach their pupils how to educate themselves.  I confess I agree with the housewives, that, for young persons intended for service, reading, writing, and arithmetic, with the use of the scrubbing and hearth brushes, are far preferable acquirements to those of the same three great principles with the use of the globes.  Whether there are any handbooks in existence, other than cookery books, to teach the duties of servants I know not; but, even if there are, servants will never read them of their own free will.  Not one in a hundred has a sufficiently strong desire to improve herself for that.  They must be taught like children, and when they are children, if any good is to come of it.

It is to me astounding, and certainly makes me very suspicious of the advocates of women’s rights, that they have done little or nothing in this direction.  Why should not some of that immense energy which is now expended on platforms be directed into this less ambitious but more natural channel?  There are tens of thousands of persons of their own sex, not indeed out of employment, but who are obtaining employment