y bright girls of good capacity who might still be in her
establishment; and, above all, she would feel herself mistress in her
own house. This is what would come of an experience in doing her own
work as you do. She who can at once put her own trained hand to the
machine in any spot where a hand is needed never comes to be the slave
of a coarse, vulgar Irishwoman.

So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be expected of servants
in a given time, and what ought to be expected of a given amount
of provisions, poor Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for
one six months in her life she had been a practical cook, and had
really had the charge of the larder, she would not now be haunted,
as she constantly is, by an indefinite apprehension of an immense
wastefulness, perhaps of the disappearance of provisions through
secret channels of relationship and favoritism. She certainly could
not be made to believe in the absolute necessity of so many pounds of
sugar, quarts of milk, and dozens of eggs, not to mention spices
and wine, as are daily required for the accomplishment of Madam
Cook's purposes. But though now she does suspect and apprehend,
she cannot speak with certainty. She cannot say, "_I_ have made
these things. I know exactly what they require. I have done this and
that myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a certain
time." It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing their
own work become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the
ground they stand on,--they are less open to imposition,--they can
speak and act in their own houses more as those "having authority,"
and therefore are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and
less willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general
error lies in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for
them as they will do for themselves, and that an untrained,
undisciplined human being ever _can_ do housework, or any other
work, with the neatness and perfection that a person of trained
intelligence can. It has been remarked in our armies that the men of
cultivation, though bred in delicate and refined spheres, can bear
up under the hardships of camp-life better and longer than rough
laborers. The reason is, that an educated mind knows how to use
and save its body, to work it and spare it, as an uneducated mind
cannot; and so the college-bred youth brings himself safely
through fatigues which kill the unreflec