hat brought them forward.

I know one woman, however, who quite successfully undertakes very
strenuous garden work, including digging, having been inured to it at
a very early age. If she could be spared from her own work to take the
position of instructress for young girls determined to make the land
their chief employment, they would be saved a vast amount of
unnecessary fatigue and labour by learning the art of using spades,
forks, hoes, and rakes in the way that experience teaches, relying
more upon the weight and designed capabilities of the tool to do the
work than upon their own untrained muscles.

We could always get a supply of excellent maids for house-work from
among the village families; they began very young, coming in for a few
hours daily to help the regular staff, and, as these left or got
married, they were ready trained to take their places. These girls
were quite free from the self-importance of the present-day domestic,
but I remember one nice village girl about whom we inquired as a
likely maid who, it then appeared, was engaged to marry a thriving
small tradesman. The girl's mother, being over-elated at her
daughter's apparently brilliant prospects of independence, rejected
the proposal with some hauteur, adding that her daughter "would soon
be keeping her own maid." I fear, however, that she was disappointed,
as the course of true love did not run smooth.

We preferred a married man as shepherd, because, when I had only a few
cows, he combined his duties with those of cowman; and, bringing in
the milk and doing the churning, he was much about the back premises.
On one occasion, however, I engaged a young bachelor, partly because
he replied, with a knowing smile, to a question as to whether he was
married, that he dared say he could be if he liked--which I
optimistically took to amount to an announcement of his engagement.

Time went on and he remained a single man, but it was observable that
he lingered on his milky way, and was more in evidence in the dairy
than his duties appeared to warrant. We concluded that he was
attracted by the cook. One day my wife said to another maid: "I can't
think why the shepherd spends so much time in the house. I suppose
cook is the attraction?" The girl blushed, hesitated, and looked down,
but finally courageously murmured: "Please, mum, it's me, mum!" They
were married in due course, and we lost an excellent servant.

Some of the village women and girls fill