es, such as the lace bonnet or silk mantilla, or the rats and
waterfalls that glorify her head. When she wishes to sew, she borrows
what is needful of a convenient next neighbor; and if she gets a place
in a family as second girl, she expects to subsist in these respects by
borrowing of the better-appointed servants, or helping herself from the
family stores.

"She expects, of course, the very highest wages, if she condescends to
live out, and by help of a trim outside appearance and the many
vacancies that are continually occurring in households she gets places,
where her object is to do just as little of any duty assigned to her as
possible, to hurry through her performances, put on her fine clothes,
and go a-gadding. She is on free and easy terms with all the men she
meets, and ready at jests and repartee, sometimes far from seemly. Her
time of service in any one place lasts indifferently from a fortnight to
two or three months, when she takes her wages, buys her a new parasol in
the latest style, and goes back to the intelligence-office. In the
different families where she has lived she has been told a hundred times
the proprieties of household life, how to make beds, arrange rooms, wash
china, glass, and silver, and set tables; but her habitual rule is to
try in each place how small and how poor services will be accepted. When
she finds less will not do, she gives more. When the mistress follows
her constantly and shows an energetic determination to be well served,
she shows that she _can_ serve well; but such attention relaxes, she
slides back again. She is as destructive to a house as a fire; the very
spirit of wastefulnes is in her; she cracks the china, dents the silver,
stops the water-pipes with rubbish; and after she is gone, there is
generally a sum equal to half her wages to be expended in repairing the
effects of her carelessness. And yet there is one thing to be said for
her: she is quite as careful of her employer's things as of her own. The
full amount of her mischief often does not appear at once, as she is
glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as much alertness and
as little thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is difficult
for people who have been trained from childhood in the school of
verities,--who have been lectured for even the shadow of a
prevarication, and shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a
habit of their souls,--it is very difficult for people so edu