justice shown you, don't send your papers to the
private residence. At home, for instance, yesterday, having given
strict orders that I was to receive nobody, "except on business," do you
suppose a smiling young Scottish gentleman, who forced himself into my
study, and there announced himself as agent of a Cattle-food Company,
was received with pleasure? There, as I sat in my arm-chair, suppose he
had proposed to draw a couple of my teeth, would I have been pleased? I
could have throttled that agent. I dare say the whole of that day's
work will be found tinged with a ferocious misanthropy, occasioned by my
clever young friend's intrusion. Cattle-food, indeed! As if beans, oats,
warm mashes, and a ball, are to be pushed down a man's throat just as
he is meditating on the great social problem, or (for I think it was my
epic I was going to touch up) just as he was about to soar to the height
of the empyrean!

Having got my cattle-agent out of the door, I resume my consideration of
that little mark on the doorpost, which is scored up as the text of the
present little sermon; and which I hope will relate, not to chalk, nor
to any of its special uses or abuses (such as milk, neck-powder, and the
like), but to servants. Surely ours might remove that unseemly little
mark. Suppose it were on my coat, might I not request its removal?
I remember, when I was at school, a little careless boy, upon whose
forehead an ink-mark remained, and was perfectly recognizable for
three weeks after its first appearance. May I take any notice of this
chalk-stain on the forehead of my house? Whose business is it to wash
that forehead? and ought I to fetch a brush and a little hot water, and
wash it off myself?

Yes. But that spot removed, why not come down at six, and wash the
doorsteps? I dare say the early rising and exercise would do me a great
deal of good. The housemaid, in that case, might lie in bed a little
later, and have her tea and the morning paper brought to her in bed:
then, of course, Thomas would expect to be helped about the boots and
knives; cook about the saucepans, dishes, and what not; the lady's-maid
would want somebody to take the curl-papers out of her hair, and get
her bath ready. You should have a set of servants for the servants,
and these under servants should have slaves to wait on them. The king
commands the first lord in waiting to desire the second lord to intimate
to the gentleman usher to request the page of the