y is evidently for this purpose.
I have not questioned Alice about it, but (to use Uncle Si's favorite
expression) "it's dollars to doughnuts" that Alice is figuring on
displaying her sixty-dollar set of new porcelain in the new glass
cabinet in the dining-room, while my rare antiques--among them the blue
platter, which was sent me from New Orleans, and which belonged
originally to the pirate Lafitte--are relegated to the dim mysterious
shelves of the butler's pantry, where dust will obscure them and
spiders make them their favorite romping grounds. I intend to ask
Lawyer Miles what he would do under like circumstances.

There is a sink in the butler's pantry, but it is wholly superfluous.
I am told that this adjunct is useful in washing such dishes and
glassware as are too precious to be sent to the kitchen. All this
sounds very fine, but the practice is to whew the tableware of all
kinds into the kitchen, whether there be a sink in the butler's pantry
or not. My grandmother (and my mother, too) never suffered a servant
to wash the fine porcelain or the cut glass; that responsible task was
always reserved for the housewife herself, and the result was that no
porcelain was chipped and no cut glass cracked. They sent me an old
willow teapot from Biddeford, and it had n't been with us three weeks
before our Celtic cook marred its symmetry by chipping off its
venerable nozzle.

The only reason why so many charming bits of china have come down to us
from the last century is that our grandmothers and our mothers cared
for these things and protected them from rough usage. But, bless your
soul! do you suppose Alice could be induced to bare her arms and apply
herself to the task of washing a stack of antique porcelain or a row of
cut-glass tumblers? No, not for the entire wealth of Wedgewood or the
combined output of Dresden and of Sevres!

Mrs. Baylor tells me that I am doing the butler's pantry a grave
injustice; that the servants will use it, and that it will prove a
great convenience. I do not wish to appear unreasonable and I am
willing to concede that the servants will utilize the pantry and its
death-dealing sink. It is very probable that under their auspices the
slaughter of china and of glassware will be continued; it moots not to
the average hired-girl whether the sink be in the kitchen or the
butler's pantry, upon the housetop or in the bowels of the earth; the
work of destruction goes on at four dollars a