elf: "Honestly," she said, "Ay been here more dan one
year, and Ay never hear a wrong word between her and him, nor between
her and me. It's shust wonderful. Ay isn't been see anyting like it
since Ay been in diss country."

"Is it so wonderful?" I asked myself, as I stole away, my own heart
aglow with the consciousness of a moral victory, "and is the lack of
self-control and human kindness at the bottom of the American servant
problem? Are we women such children that we cannot deal wisely with
our intellectual inferiors?" And more than all I had given her, as I
realised then for the first time, was the power of self-discipline
and self-control which she, all unknowingly, had developed in me.

I have not ceased the "treatment," even though the patient is nearly
well. It costs me nothing to praise her when she deserves it, to take
an occasional friend into her immaculate kitchen, and to show the
shining white pantry shelves (without papers), while she blushes and
smiles with pleasure. It costs me nothing to see that she overhears
me while I tell a friend over the telephone how capable she has been
during the stress of my work, or how clean the house is when we come
home after a long absence. It costs me nothing to send her out for a
walk, or a visit to a nearby friend, on the afternoons when her work
is finished and I am to be at home--nothing to call her attention to a
beautiful sunset or a perfect day, or to tell her some amusing story
that her simple mind can appreciate. It costs me nothing to tell
her how well she looks in her cap and apron (only I call the cap a
"hair-bow"), nor that one of the guests said she made the best cake
she had ever eaten in her life.

It costs me little to give her a pretty hatpin, or some other girlish
trifle at Easter, to bring her some souvenir of our travels, to give
her a fresh ribbon for her belt from my bolt, or some little toy "for
de children."

It means only a thought to say when she goes out, "Good-bye! Have a
good time!" or to say when I go out, "Good-bye! Be good!" It means
little to me to tell her how much my husband or our guests have
enjoyed the dinner, or to have him go into the kitchen sometimes,
while she is surrounded by a mountain of dishes, with a cheery word
and a fifty-cent piece.

It isn't much out of my way to do a bit of shopping for her when I am
shopping for myself, and no trouble at all to plan for her new gowns,
or to tell her that her new hat is very p