on false pretences, who would do so honestly enough if they had had but a little early training.  Unfortunately, the ladies of the platform do not in general stoop to such small things as domestic matters; they do not care about mere comfort, they even perhaps resent it because it is so dear to tyrannous man.  If they would only turn their attention to the education of their humbler sisters, they would win over all their enemies and put to shame the cynic who has associated Man’s Lefts with Women’s Rights.

The only School for Servants I am acquainted with sent us the worst we ever had, and if it had not been for the very handsome fee it charged both us and her for our mutual introduction, I should not have recognised it as an educational establishment at all.

It will naturally be said by men (not by their wives, for they know better), ’But surely self-interest will cause a servant to qualify herself for a place, since, having done so, she will command better wages.’  This is the mistake of the political economists, who, right enough in the importance they attach to self-interest, gravely err in supposing it to be always of a material kind.  They start with the idea that everybody wants to make as much money as possible.  So they do; but with a large majority this desire is subordinate to the wish for leisure and enjoyment.  Trades unionism, with all its faults, is founded on this important fact in human nature—­that many of us prefer narrow means, with comparative leisure, to affluence with toil.  That this notion, if universal, would destroy good work of all kinds and make perfection impossible, is beside the question, or certainly never enters into the minds of those chiefly concerned in the matter.  ’A good day’s work for a good day’s wage’ is a fine sentiment; but ’half a day’s work for half a day’s wage’ suits some people even better; while ‘half a day’s work for a good day’s wage’ suits them better still.  In old times the sense of ‘service being no inheritance’ begat habits of good conduct as well as thrift, for in most well-conducted households, servants’ wages were made proportionate to their length of service.  But nowadays a lady’s promise of raising a servant’s wages every year is quite superfluous, since it is ten to one against her keeping her for the first twelve months.  It is no wonder, then, that while the conviction of service being of a temporary character is, at least, as strong as ever, the course of conduct it now suggests is to make as much as possible out of it while it lasts, in the way of perquisites, etc.  With our cooks, especially, it is not too much to say that wages are often a secondary object as compared with the opportunity of making a purse for themselves; and the recognised privilege of selling the dripping affords cover for a multitude of petty delinquencies which if not positive thefts have a strong family resemblance to them.