as those of the proper
mistress.

Marianne, as I always foresaw, is a careful and somewhat anxious
housekeeper. Her tastes are fastidious; she is made for exactitude:
the smallest departures from the straight line appear to her shocking
deviations. She had always lived in a house where everything had been
formed to quiet and order under the ever-present care and touch of her
mother; nor had she ever participated in those cares more than to do a
little dusting of the parlor ornaments, or wash the best china, or
make sponge-cake or chocolate-caramels. Certain conditions of life had
always appeared so to be matters of course that she had never
conceived of a house without them. It never occurred to her that such
bread and biscuit as she saw at the home table would not always and of
course appear at every table,--that the silver would not always be as
bright, the glass as clear, the salt as fine and smooth, the plates
and dishes as nicely arranged, as she had always seen them, apparently
without the thought or care of any one; for my wife is one of those
housekeepers whose touch is so fine that no one feels it. She is never
heard scolding or reproving,--never entertains her company with her
recipes for cookery or the faults of her servants. She is so
unconcerned about receiving her own personal share of credit for the
good appearance of her establishment that even the children of the
house have not supposed that there is any particular will of hers in
the matter: it all seems the natural consequence of having very good
servants.

One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected on,--that, under all
the changes of the domestic cabinet which are so apt to occur in
American households, the same coffee, the same bread and biscuit, the
same nicely prepared dishes and neatly laid table, always gladdened
their eyes; and from this they inferred only that good servants were
more abundant than most people had supposed. They were somewhat
surprised when these marvels were wrought by professedly green hands,
but were given to suppose that these green hands must have had some
remarkable quickness or aptitude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly,
well-flavored ice-creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits could be
made by a raw Irish girl, fresh from her native Erin, seemed to them a
proof of the genius of the race; and my wife, who never felt it
important to attain to the reputation of a cook, quietly let it pass.

For some time, t