od--and this too after a weary vigil in the sick-room. Greatest
triumph of all, the nurses have been compelled to go as strangers to
the servants' table and make friends as best they could. It is not
easy to form any clear notion of a mind capable of devising such
useless indignities, because the shrew ought to know that her conduct
is contrasted with that of good and considerate people. The nurse
bears with composure all that is imposed on her, but she despises the
shabby woman, and she compares the behaviour of the acrid tyrant with
that of the majority of warm-hearted and generous ladies who think
nothing too good for their hired guests. I quote this extreme example
just to show how far the shrew is ready to go, and I wish it were not
all true.

Next let me deal with the mean shrew, who has one servant or more
under her control. The records of the servants' aid societies will
show plainly that there are women against whose names a significant
mark must be put, and the reason is that they turn away one girl after
another with incredible rapidity, or that despairing girls leave them
after finding life unendurable. I know that there are insolent,
sluttish, lazy, and incompetent servants, and I certainly wish to be
fair toward the mistresses; but I also know that too many of the
persons who send wild and whirling words to the newspapers belong
without doubt to the class of mean shrews. Whenever I see one of those
periodical letters which tell of the writer's lifelong tribulation, I
like to refresh my mind by repeating certain golden utterances of the
man whom we regard as one of the wisest of living Englishmen--"There
is only one way to have good servants--that is, to be worthy of being
well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and
rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the
quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are
their masters' shadows and distort their faults in a flattened
mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants'-hall, a
knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have
friends there. Only let it be remembered that 'kindness' means, as
with your child, not indulgence, but care." Substitute "mistress" for
"master" in this passage of John Ruskin's, and we have a little lesson
which the mean shrew might possibly take to heart--if she had any
heart. What is the kind of "care" which the mean one bestows on her
d