polished stove while you watch the baking of those light
biscuits and tea rusks for which you are so famous, and Mrs.
Somebodyelse chats with your sister, who is spreading the table with
your best china in the best room. When tea is over, there is plenty of
volunteering to help you wash your pretty India teacups, and get them
back into the cupboard. There is no special fatigue or exertion in all
this, though you have taken down the best things and put them back,
because you have done all without anxiety or effort, among those who
would do precisely the same if you were their visitors.

But now comes down pretty Mrs. Simmons and her pretty daughter to
spend a week with you, and forthwith you are troubled. Your youngest,
Fanny, visited them in New York last fall, and tells you of their cook
and chambermaid, and the servant in white gloves that waits on the
table. You say in your soul, "What shall we do? they never can be
contented to live as we do; how shall we manage?" And now you long for
servants.

This is the very time that you should know that Mrs. Simmons is tired
to death of her fine establishment, and weighed down with the task of
keeping the peace among her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly
loving her ease and hating strife; and yet last week she had five
quarrels to settle between her invaluable cook and the other members
of her staff, because invaluable cook, on the strength of knowing how
to get up state dinners and to manage all sorts of mysteries which her
mistress knows nothing about, asserts the usual right of spoiled
favorites to insult all her neighbors with impunity, and rule with a
rod of iron over the whole house. Anything that is not in the least
like her own home and ways of living will be a blessed relief and
change to Mrs. Simmons. Your clean, quiet house, your delicate
cookery, your cheerful morning tasks, if you will let her follow you
about, and sit and talk with you while you are at your work, will all
seem a pleasant contrast to her own life. Of course, if it came to the
case of offering to change lots in life, she would not do it; but very
likely she _thinks_ she would, and sighs over and pities herself, and
thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are, how snugly and securely
you live, and wishes she were as untrammeled and independent as you.
And she is more than half right; for, with her helpless habits, her
utter ignorance of the simplest facts concerning the reciprocal
relations of