ur family circle. Adam was
head of the house, general provider, hired-man, stable-boy,
head-gardener, coach-man, night-watchman and everything else of the
male persuasion on the place; whilst I was cook, laundress, nurse,
housekeeper, manicure, stenographer, and general housemaid, as well as
the mother of the family--a situation that even though it involved us
in no end of hard work, had its compensations. Living off in suburbs
as we did, you can have no idea of what a comfort it was to us not to
be at the mercy of a cook who would threaten to leave us every time
anything happened to displease her, such as an extra meal to be cooked
in emergency cases, or the failure of the cooking-sherry to come up to
the exalted standards of her taste as a connoisseur in wines, and hard
as the housework was, as I look back upon it now, I realize how much
trouble I was spared in not having to follow a yellow-haired fluffy
ruffles about the house all day long cleaning up after her. If there
is anything of the labor-saving device in that modern invention known
as a chambermaid, I don't know where it comes in. I'd rather sweep
three floors, and make twenty-nine beds, every day of my life than put
in one single week trying to get seven cents worth of efficient work
out of a fourteen-dollar housemaid."

At this point I ventured to put in the suggestion that I should have
thought some use could have been made of the monkeys in the matter of
Domestic Service, whereupon the dear lady, who was not nearly so
sensitive on the subject of the Simian family as her husband had
always shown himself to be, patted me on the head, and smiled
indulgently, as she cracked her little joke.

"Monkeys, my dear Methy," she replied, "were always more efficient in
the higher branches. Seriously, however," she went on, "we had that
same idea ourselves, and we tried Simian labor for a while, but it was
far from satisfactory. They were too playfully impetuous, and we had
to give them up as indoor servants. We had a Monkey Butler one season,
and nothing could induce him to serve our dinner in that dignified
fashion in which a dinner should be served. He would pass the soup
with one paw, the fish with the other, while serving the bread with
his tail, and all simultaneously, so that instead of dinner becoming a
peaceful meal, it was at all times, a highly excitable function that
left us all in a state of trembling nervousness when it was over. Try
as we might we coul