probably enjoy it just as
little as you are appreciating her efforts now. And because the children
overhead run up and down and sound like a herd of buffaloes, don't
imagine that your own Precious Ones are any more fairy-footed to the
people who live just below. It's all in the day's endurance, and the
wider your understanding and the greater your charity, the more
patiently you will live and let live. It was an old saying that no two
families could live under one roof; but in flat life ten and sometimes
twenty families must live under one roof, and while you do not need to
know them all, or perhaps any of them, you will find that they do, in
some measure, become a part of your lives, and that your own part of the
whole is just about what you make it.

Also, there are the servant girls. We cannot hope that a highly
efficient, intelligent young girl will perform menial labor some sixteen
hours a day for a few dollars a week and board, with the privilege of
eating off the tubs and sleeping in a five-by-seven closet off the
kitchen, when she can obtain a clerkship in one of the department stores
where she has light, clean employment, shorter hours, and sees
something of the passing show; or when, by attending night school for a
short time, she can learn stenography and command even better salary for
still shorter hours. It requires quite as much intelligence to be a
capable house servant as to be a good clerk; and as for education, there
is no lack of that in these days, whatever the rank of life. Even when a
girl prefers household service, if she be bright and capable it is but a
question of time when she will find employment with those to whom the
question of wages is considered as secondary to that of the quality of
service obtained in return.

So you see we must not expect too much of our "girl for general
housework," unless we are prepared to pay her for her longer hours and
harder work something approximating the sum we pay to the other girl
who comes down in a sailor hat and pretty shirt waist at nine or ten to
take a few letters and typewrite them, and read a nice new novel between
times until say five o'clock, and who gets four weeks' vacation in hot
weather, and five if she asks for it prettily, with no discontinuance of
salary. All this may be different, some day, but while we are waiting,
let us not forget that there are many things in the world that it would
be well to remember, and that "_the greatest of th